Dr. Mathijs Pelkmans

Biography

Mathijs Pelkmans is a specialist in anthropology, with a focus on the Caucasus and Central Asia. His major fieldwork took place from 1999 to 2001, during which he concentrated on territorial borders, tracing the social biography of the Iron Curtain (formerly the Soviet border) between Georgia and Turkey. His research documented the changing patterns of everyday life around the border, culminating in his significant work, 'Defending Borders' (2006), which illustrated how the decline of the Iron Curtain was unexpectedly accompanied by the hardening of social and cultural boundaries. Further fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan was conducted from 2003 to 2004, followed by shorter research trips in 2018 that explored the religious and political dimensions of post-socialist changes. His research has focused on the trajectories of militant secularism, nationalism, and Christian and Islamic missionary movements, leading to a study of the making and unmaking of convictions and the reconfigurations of 'secular', 'religious', and 'post-atheist' identities in a Muslim-majority context. Over the past decade, he has published extensively on the complex and often shadowy intersections of knowledge and belief, including the monograph 'Fragile Conviction' (2017) and (co-)edited volumes: 'Ethnographies of Doubt' (2013), 'Wilful Blindness' (2020), and 'People Compare' (2022). He has recently relocated his primary research focus back to the Caucasus and is currently developing a long-term project entitled 'Trading Truths Caucasus: Missionaries, Diplomats, Spies.' His expertise includes the Caucasus (Republic of Georgia), Central Asia (Kyrgyz Republic), border studies, historical anthropology, methodology, Islam, Christianity, and the sociology of knowledge.

Research Interests