Organized by the Anthropology Research Center and the PhD Program in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Ilia State University, we invite you to join our Spring 2026 Anthropology Seminar Series.

The series brings together lectures and book talks, gathering researchers from Tbilisi and beyond around questions of ethnographic methodologies, everyday life, memory, place, and belonging. All sessions take place on Tuesdays. Times are listed in Tbilisi time.

Working language: English

For the online seminar links, please contact mariam.darchiashvili@iliauni.edu.ge

• Tue, 24 March, 17:00 PM – Nana Iashvili “Collateralized lives: Home, debt, and financialization in the Republic of Georgia” — Online
• Tue, 31 March, 17:00 PM – Konrad Siekierski “The Agency and Materiality of Sacred Texts in Armenian Christianity” — ISU, Room A 103, 32 Ilia Chavchavadze Ave.
• Tue, 7 April, 17:00 PM – Natallia Paulovich “The Ecology of Everyday Life: Local Food Practices in the Face of Environmental Threats in the Racha-Lechkhumi and Kvemo Svaneti Region” — Online
• Tue, 14 April, 17:00 PM – Tea Kamushadze “Silenced Childhoods: Socialization, Power, and Postcolonial Reflections in Georgian Soviet Ethnography” — ISU, Room A 103, 32 Ilia Chavchavadze Ave.
• Tue, 28 April, 17:00 PM – Benjamin Arenstein “On the Reading of Poetry and the Poetry of Reading: The Literary Lives of the Soviet Jewish Underground in Leningrad and Lithuania” — ISU, Room A 103, 32 Ilia Chavchavadze Ave.
• Tue, 5 May, 17:00 PM – Nino Aivazishvili “Soviet concept of “kulturnost” in postsocialist and postmigration context” — Online
• Tue, 19 May, 19:00 PM David Leupold — Book talk “The Death and Life of Southern Soviet Cities: Urban Futures and their Afterlives” — Book House “Ligamus”, 32 Ilia Chavchavadze Ave. https://www.routledge.com/The-Death-and-Life-of-Southern-Soviet-Cities-Urban-Futures-and-their-Afterlives/Leupold/p/book/9781032982847
• Tue, 2 June, 17:00 PM Giorgi Cheishvili “Who Would Build a Church in Turkey? Unrecognizable Past, Uncanny Ruins, and the Bones of the National Other” — Online
• Tue, 9 June, 17:00 PM Tinatin (Tiko) Khomeriki “Talk title TBA” — Online
• Tue, 16 June, 17:00 PM Christina Schwenkel — Book talk “Sonic Socialism: Crisis and Care in Pandemic Hanoi “ — Online https://luminosoa.org/books/m/10.1525/luminos.249
• Tue, 23 June, 19:00 PM Lauren A Woodard — Book talk “Ambiguous Inclusion: Migration and Race on the Russia-China Border” — Book House “Ligamus”, 32 Ilia Chavchavadze Ave. https://books.google.ge/books/about/Ambiguous_Inclusion.html?id=Q5930QEACAAJ&redir_esc=y
• Tue, 30 June, 19:00 PM Weronika Zmiejewski — Book talk “Georgian Women on the Move: Migration to Greece in Times of Crisis” —  Book House “Ligamus”, 32 Ilia Chavchavadze Ave. https://v1.berghahnbooks.com/title/ZmiejewskiGeorgian