Gediminas Lankauskas
Associate Professor
Anthropology
University of Regina
Canada
Biography
During the past decade, Gediminas Lankauskas has carried out ethnographic research in postsocialist Eastern Europe. He is particularly interested in how socio-economic and cultural transformations taking place in this part of the world are shaped by the pursuit of Western-style “modernity” and its associated processes of globalization. One of his current projects is concerned with the emergence of transnational religious faiths in post-Soviet Lithuania. It examines several churches of Pentecostal Evangelists, which have been embraced by some Lithuanians as sources of “modernization” and moral betterment. He is also working on a project which focuses on nostalgic invocations of the recent socialist past in contemporary Eastern Europe via memorial discourse, visual imagery, and consumption. Dr. Lankauskas has taught courses in Introductory Anthropology, Field Research, Ethnographic Writing, and the Ethnography of Postsocialism. His publications have appeared in Ethnos, The Senses and Society, Anthropologie et sociétés, Lithuanian Ethnology, Focaal, among others.
Research Interest
religion, morality, social memory, "modernity", nationalism, the state, popular culture in postsocialist Lithuania, Eastern Europe
