Lena Keller-Bischoff

Lena Keller-Bischoff is a Social and Cultural Anthropologist (M.A.) researching on social dimensions of waste. Together with local research partners she conducted ethnographic field researches in Indonesia and critically juxtaposed two types of waste banks: civil society waste banks and waste banks funded by the local government and Unilever CSR. In her previous field researches Lena worked with the World Fair Trade Organization and analyzed labour conditions in Indonesian Fairtrade Organizations. Lena has worked in the field of International Development and has extensive expertise in socio-cultural concepts relevant for waste practices, in participatory community approaches and in methods that enable reflection on postcolonial tendencies/North-South asymmetries. In her teaching assignments at Freiburg University Lena teaches Ethnographic Methods.

Projects

INDO X MELT

The transdiciplinary and transnational INDOxMELT collective wants to accelerate solutions to plastic pollution.

Blog Posts

Java’s waste banks

Waste banks are a novel concept for addressing Indonesian waste problems. Instead of burning their waste or throwing it into rivers, communities establish a place for villagers to deposit their…

WHAT ARE MICROPLASTICS?

Microplastics are a common form of plastic, often overlooked literally and figuratively, that are less than 1mm in size. A popular type of micro plastics are microbeads. Common in facial scrubs,…

PETE CLARKSON + THE WASHED UP WORKSHOP

AFTER A MORNING SURF AND A QUICK TAILGATE LUNCH OF QUESADILLAS IN THE PARKING LOT OF THE TOFINO BOTANICAL GARDENS, WE HEADED OVER TO PETE CLARKSON’S HOME-STUDIO TO SEE HIS…

AUDIT 001

Garbage is gross. No surprise there. It’s also, for our purposes, incredibly useful. So at the end of August, three of us spent a couple hours sorting through 5 big…