Mikel Venhovens is a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University and the University of Amsterdam. His current research, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and titled “Territorial Phantom Pain: Exploring the Post-Conflict Environment of Territorial Loss, Crisis, and Non-Return in the Republic of Georgia,” focuses on the chronicity and normalization of crisis in post-conflict environments.
It focuses on the protracted internal displacement (IDP) crisis in the Republic of Georgia and how this protracted displacement pushes our thinking and use of the concept of crisis. It does so by deconstructing the concept of crisis, which often implies immediacy and urgency. But what if a crisis simply continues and turns into something chronic? What if a crisis loses its urgency and becomes normalized in everyday life? Can we still call it a crisis? When does a crisis end?
He has published on numerous topics, such as ethnic violence, uncertainty, borderland spectacles, (de facto) displacement and disenfranchisement, transience, de facto-ness, ruination, and materiality. He holds a PhD in Human Security and Anthropology from Aarhus University, Denmark and has previously been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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