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Dr. O.K. (Olga) Sooudi

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Programme group: Moving Matters: People, Goods, Power and Ideas
Photographer: Danka Kordas

Visiting address
  • Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
  • Room number: B5.04
Postal address
  • Postbus 15509
    1001 NA Amsterdam
Contact details
  • Profile

    Biography

    I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.  I serve as Chair of the Anthropology Department Programme Committee, and am a member of the AISSR research programme group, Moving Matters.

    In 2023, I was awarded an NWO Advancing Equity Academia Grant as Principal Investigator of the consortium project, Disrupting Sameness in Dutch Academia, a diversity, equity, and inclusion project that researches how "sameness" is reproduced and maintained as a mechanism of professionalization and privilege in university settings, with the goal of developing interventions with institutional and societal stakeholders to disrupt that sameness and create more inclusive and diverse universities. Find out more about our project and the team here: https://disruptingsamenessindutchacademia.nl.

    Education

    PhD: Anthropology, Yale University; MPhil: Anthropology, Yale University; BA: Literature and French Studies, Duke University.

    Research

    I have two research streams: one is a on diversity, equity, and inclusion in Dutch universities, and especially in how to redress the underrepresentation of minoritized ethnic groups in academia. The other is my longstanding research interests in art markets, creative labor, and value, especially in Asian contexts. I have conducted fieldwork in Mumbai, Tokyo, and New York City. Her research focuses on how the production and circulation of art are shaped by the market and on artistic labor. Her ongoing writing on the Mumbai art ecosystem examines marketization’s impacts since the 2000s onwards on the production and circulation of fine art, transformations in art infrastructure, as well as market influences on artists and artistic careers and how artists negotiate these. She is also the author of Japanese New York: Migrant artists and self-reinvention on the world stage (2014), an ethnographic study of Japanese artists and the links between migration, creative work, and self-reinvention.

  • Teaching & Supervision

    Courses taught

    Current

    • Anthropological Research Methods (Bachelors Anthropology)
    • Anthropology of East Asia (Bachelors Anthropology)
    • Writing Ethnography (MA Anthropology)
    • Tutorial Group, (MA Anthropology)

    Past

    • Working with Fieldwork Data, Research Masters Social Sciences
    • East and Central Asia, MsC Contemporary Asian Studies
    • Anthropology of Modern Asia 
    • Youth Cultures in Transnational Context (ISW)
    • Youth: Contemporary Debates (ISW)
    • Age, City, Work (ISW)
    • BA Thesis class (ISW)
    • Urban Anthropology (Bachelors Anthropology)
    • Asian Cities
    • Introduction to East Asia: Powerhouse and Politics

    Supervision

    I am interested in supervising students with research interests in art, material culture, value, art markets, cultural production, and creative labor. 

    In addition to masters supervision, I currently co-supervise the following PhD students:

    • Sarita Jarmack (Johannesburg art world, Anthropology, with Eileen Moyer)
    • Andrea Friedmann Rozenbaum (Private museums in Brazil, Sociology, with Olav Velthuis)
    • Joanna Lu (Chinese migrant artists in the Netherlands, Anthropology, with Eileen Moyer)
    • Zaydoun Hajjar (Levantine musicians in Berlin, with Shanshan Lan)

     

  • Publications

    2024

    • Sooudi, O. K. (2024). Creating Value for objects-in-waiting: Valuating and decolonizing art in Mumbai. American Ethnologist, 1-16. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13352

    2023

    • Sooudi, O. K. (2023). From Mumbai to London: Co-constituting value in art from India via local and global circuits of valuation. In O. Salemink, A. Siegel Corrêa, J. Sejrup, & V. Nielsen (Eds.), Global art in local artworlds: Changing Hierarchies of Value (pp. 193-217). (Materializing Culture). Routledge. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003128908-20 [details]

    2022

    2020

    2018

    2016

    2015

    2014

    2012

    • Sooudi, O. K. (2012). Art patron as 'taste scapegoat'? Complicity and disavowal in Mumbai's contemporary art world. Etnofoor, 24(2), 123-143. [details]

    2011

    2010

    • Sooudi, O. K. (2010). Connoisseurs of urban life: aesthetic practices and the everyday among Japanese migrants in New York City. In R. G. Davis, D. Fischer-Nornung, & J. C. Kardux (Eds.), Aesthetic practices and politics in media, music, and art: performing migration (pp. 212-226). (Routledge research in cultural and media studies; No. 26). New York: Routledge. [details]

    2022

    2018

    2017

    • Sooudi, O. K. (2017). Remaking Japan through Transnational Encounters, Difference, and Struggles for Social Equality: [Review of: J.D. Hankins (2014) Working skin : making leather, making a multicultural Japan; I.-A. Laemmerhirt (2013) Embracing differences : transnational cultural flows between Japan and the United States; D.J. Milly (2014) New policies for new residents : immigrants, advocacy, and governance in Japan and beyond; K. Tsuchiya (2014) Reinventing citizenship : Black Los Angeles, Korean Kawasaki, and community participation]. The Journal of Asian Studies, 76(3), 802-812. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911817000651 [details]

    2019

    Prize / grant

    Membership / relevant position

    • Sooudi, O. (2020-2023). Member of Academic Committee, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden.
    • Sooudi, O. (2016-2020). Member of Academic Committee, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden.

    Talk / presentation

    • Sooudi, O. (speaker) (14-11-2018). Navigating the system: how artists relate to galleries and alternative art spaces in Mumbai, Abu Dhabi Art Talks, Abu Dhabi Art .

    Others

    • Nooteboom, G. (organiser), Sooudi, O. K. (organiser) & Baas, M. (participant) (12-6-2018 - 13-6-2018). Movement as Interregnum: People, Technologies, Goods, and Ideas, Singapore (organising a conference, workshop, ...).
    • Sooudi, O. (participant) (2018 - 2019). Judge for ICAS Book Prize, Social Sciences Reading Committee, ICAS (other).
    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    • No ancillary activities