Research Focus Areas

Short Biography

Alberto Buela is a PhD candidate at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology. His PhD project, supervised by Peter Schweitzer and Elspeth Ready, focuses on the relationships between livelihoods, social networks, and cultural practices among Inuit in Canada. Combining qualitative and quantiative methods, the project invesigates the the economic, social, and cultural factors that shape resilience and well-being.

He is a recipient of a three-year DOC Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and collaborates with the Sanguatsiniq research project based at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Alberto studied social and cultural anthropology at the University of Vienna. In his his masters’ thesis he studied how economic transformations have shaped the social and political organization of the Iñupiat from Alaska. Previously, he worked with applied social research for evaluation in higher education, as well as a university lecturer.

Selected Publications

• Buela, Alberto. 2020. “Leadership and Inequality among the Iñupiat: A Case of Transegalitarian Hunter–Gatherers.” In Social Inequality before Farming? Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Investigation of Egalitarian and Non-Egalitarian Social Relationships in Prehistoric and Extant Hunter-Gatherer Societies, edited by Luc Moreau. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
  https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.60645
• Buela, Alberto. 2016. “Hunter-Gatherer Transformations and Mixed Economies: A Case Study from Alaska.” Journal Für Entwicklungspolitik 32 (4): 17–40.
  https://doi.org/10.20446/JEP-2414-3197-32-4-17