portrait picture Philipp Budka

Dr. Philipp Budka

Research Associate (PostDoc) / Lecturer
Team of Lecturer Representatives

Contact Details

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna
ERC Project InfraNorth
Schottengasse 10, 1010 Vienna

Tel: +43 1 4277 49583
E-Mail: philipp.budka@univie.ac.at
Website: https://www.philbu.net/

Office Hours

On appointment via e-mail

philipp.budka@univie.ac.at

Teaching

Current Courses: u:find

Past Courses: u:find

Research Areas & Interests

  • Anthropology of Technology & Infrastructure (Digital & Transport Infrastructures; Technology Appropriation; Socio-Technical Change; Technology-Enhanced Learning)
  • Digital Anthropology & Digital Ethnography (Digital Culture & Politics; Internet Histories, Ethnography as Methodology & Epistemology)
  • Anthropology of Media (Indigenous Media; Media Activism; Mediation of Conflict; Media, Rituals & Performativity)
  • Visual Anthropology (Visual Culture & Communication; Digital Visuality)
  • Anthropology of Globalization (Transnationalism; Ethnicity & Nationalism in Global Context)
  • North America & Europe

Short Biography

Philipp Budka is a research associate and lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna. He leads the North American study region in the ERC Advanced Grant project "Building Arctic Futures: Transport Infrastructures and Sustainable Northern Communities - InfraNorth" (PI Peter Schweitzer) and explores transport infrastructures in northern Canada. Currently, he is on the team of lecturer representatives at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna. Budka is also co-founder of the Digital Ethnography Initiative at the University of Vienna, a founding member and co-convenor of the Media Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), and a member of APRI - Austrian Polar Research Institute.

Budka studied Social and Cultural Anthropology as well as Communication at the University of Vienna (MA / Mag.phil. 2003) and Utrecht University. Between 2003 and 2013, he coordinated several projects at the Austrian Latin America Institute and the University of Vienna – mainly in the field of digital teaching and technology-enhanced learning (e.g. Budka & Schallert, 2009). In 2017, he finished his doctoral studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna with a thesis about the Indigenization of the internet in Northwestern Ontario, Canada (e.g. Budka, 2015, 2019). For his projects, he conducted fieldwork in Canada, Austria, and several internet environments.

In addition to his long-standing interest in (digital) media and technologies (e.g. Bräuchler & Budka, 2020, Budka, 2022, Udupa & Budka, 2021), Budka is currently engaged in infrastructure studies (particularly in northern regions, e.g. Budka, 2024), digital ethnography (e.g. Palmberger & Budka, 2020) and historical internet research (e.g. Budka, 2021). He edited Theorising Media and Conflict (with Bräuchler, 2020, Anthropology of Media Series, Berghahn Books) and Ritualisierung - Mediatisierung - Performance (with Luger & Graf, 2019, V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press) and is now working on two other book projects. A monograph on the sociotechnical history of the Indigenous internet environment MyKnet.org and a book on transport infrastructures in northern Manitoba, Canada.

Selected Publications

Complete List of Publications