معرفی
Carina Truyts serves as an Associate Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation within Deakin University's Faculty of Arts and Education, where she coordinates the interdisciplinary Science and Society Network. Concurrently, she works as a research officer at Monash University on the Marsden-funded 'Creating families' project examining assisted reproduction experiences in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Her educational background includes a Master of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Cape Town, with doctoral research exploring human-environment relationships in Kimberley, South Africa, where she established the social anthropology department and undergraduate programme.
As a social anthropologist and STS scholar, Truyts' research critically examines nourishment, reproduction (including epigenetics and DOHaD), and human/environment intra-action through decolonial frameworks. Her work bridges urban anthropology, health studies, and post-apartheid analysis, with particular focus on how spatial materiality shapes knowledge production and how racialized legacies manifest in contemporary institutions. She advocates for emplacement theory to center Global South perspectives in dismantling colonial academic structures.
Her publication portfolio reveals consistent thematic evolution toward methodological innovation in decolonizing pedagogy and ethnographic practice. Early work analyzed tuberculosis stigma through improvisational research methods in South Africa, while recent scholarship develops spatial-material approaches to teaching social sciences across Southern African universities. Key threads include challenging developmentalist narratives in urban contexts, deconstructing racial dynamics in post-apartheid institutions, and creating embodied learning frameworks that situate students within historically contested communities.
Truyts actively contributes to academic discourse through initiatives like the Science and Society Network and media engagements including the 'Academic Citizen' podcast episode on new universities. Her collaborative projects with Monash University and Southern African institutions demonstrate sustained commitment to transnational, interdisciplinary research addressing structural inequities in education and healthcare systems.
Her laboratory of practice manifests through community-engaged projects like the 'Big Hole Counter Narrative' initiative at Sol Plaatje University, where she integrated anthropology courses with local artists and performance troupes to generate alternative urban narratives through film, musical performances, and student exhibitions.
