Max Müller
Research Interests
- diaspora, transnationalism and mobilities
- postmigration societies, cultural hybridity and anti-racism
- care (psychosocial care for migrants and migrantised people, intercultural hospice care)
- autoethnography, affective scholarship and engaged research
- Anthropology of religion (Buddhism, mindfulness, altered states of consciousness)
- entheogens, psychedelic therapy and psychedelic renaissance in the Global North
- Regional Focus: vietnamese lifeworlds in Berlin, Viet Nam, Berlin
Dissertation Project
In my doctoral research project, I examine notions and practices of care concerning the topics of dying and death within the Vietnamese communities in Berlin. Firstly, I investigate the religious care work for deceased relatives of Vietnamese migrants in an East Berlin pagoda. Secondly, I am interested in how aging members of this community, despite facing racist discrimination and structures, have established a self-managed migrant space for their important community care. The starting point of my research interest is to understand how the complex issues of dying and death are negotiated within this pagoda, in order to trace the affective dimension of dying in the diaspora. This research project is framed by the fact that the pagoda community has been threatened with closure by Berlin authorities since 2016 . In the spirit of an engaged anthropology , I have been supporting the community in their struggle against bureaucratic obstacles since 2020 .
In addition to my research in the pagoda, I work as a hospice volunteer in the Vietnam team of the intercultural hospice service DongBangJa . My role there is to provide culture and language sensitive support to Vietnamese people and their families in Berlin, helping them to achieve a dignified death in their second home of Germany. Through this additional perspective, my research focuses on the affective tensions that arise in relation to care when institutions of the white dominant society (hospitals, nursing homes, health insurance, etc.) intersect with post-migration lived realities.
Biography
I was born in East Berlin shortly after the reunification and have been conducting research in the Vietnamese communities of Berlin and Vietnam since 2015. I studied Social and Cultural Anthropology and Religious Studies in Göttingen and Hanoi. Since 2019, I have been working as a research associate at the Collaborative Research Center "Affective Societies", where I am currently conducting research on the lives, deaths, and psychosocial care of Vietnamese migrants.
Instagram: @makse35er