Dr. Meghanne Barker

Biography

Meghanne Barker is a Fellow at the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research spans animation, childhood, and film culture in postsocialist Eastern Europe and Eurasia. She is currently completing a book manuscript titled 'Throw Voice: Suspended Animations of Kazakhstani Childhood', which examines how children and puppets participate in animating ideologies of childhood within government institutions in Kazakhstan. This ethnographic monograph argues that vulnerable children growing up in institutional care work particularly hard to demonstrate their worthiness for inclusion in optimistic projections of the future. Barker has published her research in the Anthropological Quarterly and has served as a guest co-editor for a special issue of the Semiotic Review. Her ongoing research includes projects on transmediality in early Soviet children’s culture, media events at World Expositions, and the politics surrounding amateurism in postsocialist film clubs. Prior to joining LSE, Barker was a Collegiate Assistant Professor in Social Sciences and a Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago's Department of Anthropology, where she completed her PhD in linguistic anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Research Interests