Short Biography

Wilma Jovell is a praedoc at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology under the supervision of Tatjana Thelen, and a member of the CAST research network. Her doctoral project explores how the state enacts, withdraws, and negotiates care through the governance of public green spaces. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a public park in Athens, Greece, her project examines the collaborations and frictions between different actors in the space amid widespread privatization of public spaces in the city. Her research contributes to debates on care and state transformation by treating the management of public space and nature as a political and moral care practice.

She has been studying social anthropology, philosophy, creative writing, and documentary filmmaking in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Vienna, and received her MA in social anthropology from Stockholm University in 2025. Before pursuing her PhD, she worked as a journalist. Her research interests include urban anthropology, political ecology, sensory methods, and the moral and affective dimensions of care and the state.