The Spatial Embedding of Electronic Infrastructure & Digital Food Futures? Exploring the Emergence of Digital Farming and Big Data

Biographical Notes

Prof. Dr. Ursula Rao (SFB 1199 & Institute of Anthropology, Leipzig University, Germany)
Ursula Rao is an urban anthropologist working in India. Her current work focuses on social transformation afforded through biometric technology and eGovernance projects in India. She has also contributed to the fields of religious anthropology and media anthropology as well as she has written about resettlement in the mega city of Delhi, Hindi and English journalism in North India, and contemporary Hindu traditions.

Dr. Sarah Ruth Sippel (SFB 1199 & Institute of Anthropology, Leipzig University, Germany)
Sarah Ruth Sippel studied Middle Eastern studies and philosophy (Leipzig, Germany and Aix-en-Provence, France) and received her PhD in geography (Leipzig). In her PhD dissertation she combined a global agri-food systems perspective with various approaches to human and livelihood security in order to investigate processes of social differentiation in Moroccan export agriculture. Her current research project addresses the diverse imaginations of land through the lens of Australia’s increasing agricultural ties to the Gulf States and China.

Michaela Böhme (SFB 1199, Leipzig University, Germany)
Michaela Böhme is a research assistant working in the SFB project C4 “Land Imaginations: The Repositioning of Farming, Productivity, and Sovereignty in Australia” headed by Dr. Sarah Ruth Sippel. She earned a joint MA degree in global studies from Leipzig University (Germany) and the University of Wrocław (Poland), during which she focused on China’s changing role in world affairs and the political, social, and economic processes currently transforming China. Her current research focuses on how Chinese investments into Australian agricultural land transform Australia’s food production system and explores the conflicting imaginations of land that play out in this process.