Johanna Markkula

Johanna Markkula is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University (CEU), where she joined in 2022. Her work bridges anthropology and sociology, focusing on maritime labor, global capitalism, and postcolonial inequalities within the shipping industry. She conducts immersive ethnographic research both at sea and in maritime governance institutions.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Anthropology, Stanford University
• M.A. in Social Anthropology, Stockholm University and Université Lumière Lyon 2
• B.A. in Anthropology, Concordia University

Her research centers on the sea as a foundational space for global capitalism, analyzing how labor, technology, and infrastructure in shipping reproduce global inequalities and colonial power dynamics. Through long-term ethnography aboard cargo ships and institutional fieldwork at organizations like the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and MARINA (Philippines), she investigates how racialized hierarchies and intercultural relations are maintained or challenged in confined maritime workplaces. Her work contributes to critical debates in political economy, mobility studies, and postcolonial theory.

Johanna is currently developing a monograph titled Moving Worlds: Maritime Work and Life on the Social Ocean, which synthesizes her ethnographic findings into a comprehensive analysis of life and labor on the social ocean. Her research highlights how 90% of global trade relies on a deeply unequal maritime labor system, with profound implications for understanding contemporary globalization.

Scientific Awards:

She has advised no publicly listed students to date. Her research has been supported through postdoctoral and faculty positions but specific grants are not mentioned. She has conducted institutional ethnography with key maritime regulatory and labor bodies across Europe and the Philippines, contributing to interdisciplinary understandings of maritime governance and seafarer experiences.

Labs, Teams, and Research Projects: She was a Postdoctoral Fellow on the project "Dis-assembling the Life Cycle of Containerships: Ethnographic Explorations into Maritime Working Lives" at the University of Oslo, and continues independent research on maritime labor at CEU.