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URPP Language and Space Language and Space Lab

Kristina Eiviler, MA

Kristina Eiviler, MA

  • Doctoral candidate Video Group
Address
Freiestrasse 16, 8032 Zürich
Room number
FRF E 4

Kristina Eiviler joined the URPP Language and Space in April 2019.


PhD Project

Interactions, Objects, Spaces: Interdisciplinary approach to vernacular practices in public places

In my research, I apply EMCA methodology on the ethnographical data, to analyze the cross-cultural phenomenon of interaction between people and publicly venerated objects, along with the spacial modifications that emerge as a result of these interactions.
The commonly seen form of the indicated phenomenon is: people touching specific parts of the statues, or stones, for luck. Nonetheless, this phenomenon can attain significantly complex expressions, such as accomplishing more engaging physical contact with the object (sitting, standing, lying, bowing to the object, etc), incorporating other objects to the venerated object (food, flowers, coins, notes, etc), constructing new discourses about the place or institutionalizing it (making it a public facility, organizing touristic venues, etc). Given that these objects are a part of the public landscape and that the interactions occur in mundane settings, the human-object, human-human and the spatial dimensions of the interactions are strongly entangled. Therefore, I examine the embodied forms of the behavior and the semiotic resources of the space which are being activated through these encounters and which might differentiate ritual(ized) from everyday actions. My focus in on naturally-occurring interactions, namely object-cantered sequences and sequences of distinctive spatial practices. I analyze how participants moderate their trajectories, postures, gestures, how they interact with the object and through the object, how the dynamics of these interactions re-shapes spacial dimensions.
In order to answer the research questions, I include disciplines such as linguistic anthropology, material culture studies, sensory anthropology, popular culture studies, urban studies. The data I am currently working on consists of video recordings, audio recordings, photographs, texts and interviews. The significant part was collected in Russia, in the Moscow Metro station “Revolutionary square” with the 76 human-size bronze statues; in the Moscow park Kolomenskoe, with the Gus stone – male stone and the Deviy stone – female stone, and in Pereslavl-Zalessky (Yaroslavl Region), which, thought the years, became a pilgrimage hot-spot due to the Synyi stone, located there.

Supervisor: PD Dr. Klaus Wolfgang Kesselheim

Co-supervisor: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Tschofen

Funding Source: URPP Language and Space

Projects

May 2022

Religious Robots? Interdisciplinary Pilot Study on the Interactional Mechanisms between Humans and Robot BlessU-2 at the exhibition “Planet digital”, in collaboration with the Museum for Design, Zurich and technical support from LiRI.

In the project, I used eye tracking glasses and video cameras to explore the interactional mechanisms between BlessU-2 robot and visitors of the exhibition. Additionally, I conducted interviews with the visitors to understand their experience and their point of view considering the incorporation of spirituality in robotics.

Position: Project creator and leader

Nov 2020 - Feb 2021

Tobii Eye Tracking Glasses Starters Package for Linguistic Research Infrastructure (LiRI), University of Zurich. During the project, I created an interactive Starters training package for the novel users of the eye tracking glasses at LiRI. The package is embedded in the UZH online learning system OLAT.

Position: Eye tracking training material creator

2015 – 2017

Protecting the immaterial heritage of the Torlak vernacular, at The Institute for Balkan Studies of Serbian Academy for Sciences and Arts, Museum of Ethnography in Belgrade. The goal of the project was preserving endangered Torlak vernacular by collecting audio and video recordings of the speakers and presenting the collected data on a website. I worked as a fieldwork researcher and one of the fieldwork team leads.
Position: researcher
Project leader: Biljana Sikimić

Website of the project: Timočki govori

Research interests

  • Multimodal interaction analysis
  • Anthropology of religion
  • AI, robotics, religion, and spirituality
  • Linguistic anthropology
  • Video-based research and eye tracking
  • Spatial theories
  • Theater and performance studies

Awards

Best Student Paper Award: Eiviler, K. (2023). "The Silence in the crowd: How visitors of venerated places display and make the self-focused state of non-talk accountable to the others" International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA), Brisbane, Australia. Best Student Paper Award.

Winner of the 4th Global Science Film Festival, category: Scientists-as-Filmmakers. “Who is (not) Swiss?” (2020, 4`4``, language Swiss German). Team: Kristina Eiviler (UZH), Petra Sidler (FHNW & NCCR – on the move) and Monika Molnar (UZH).

Public performance

Conferences

Eiviler, K. (2023). "To Be or Not to Be Blessed? A Case Study on Human – BlessU-2 Robot Interactional Practices" 20th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR), Vilnius, Lithuania. 

Eiviler, K. (2023). "The Silence in the crowd: How visitors of venerated places display and make the self-focused state of non-talk accountable to the others" International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA), Brisbane, Australia. Best Student Paper Award. 

Eiviler, K (2022). “The body and the object: Exploring the cultural phenomena of touching statues in public spaces” Annual conference of the Language and Social Interaction Working Group (LANSI), Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, USA.

Eiviler, K (2022). “Achieving Spirituality? Interactional linguistics and the spatial turn”. 19th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions, Cork, Ireland.

Eiviler, K (2021). “Bodies in Action: What Can Multimodality Tell Us about the Resilience of Vernacular Religious Practices”. 18th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (IAHR Regional Conference), Pisa, Italy.

Eiviler, K. (2019). "The Touch of Luck: A Case Study on the Practices of Touching
Monuments in Public Spaces in Moscow." 17th Annual Conference of the European
Association for the Study of Religions (EASR)
, Tartu, Estonia.

Eiviler, K. (2019). "Monuments and the Places of Veneration in Moscow: Commemoration, Rituals, Mythology." 19th International School in Folkloristics and Cultural Anthropology, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Russia.

Eiviler, K. (2018). “`Взято – проклято`. Представления о скрытом сокровище:
мифические хранители и способы получения ” (`Seized-Cursed` the Idea of the Hidden Treasure – Mythical Keepers and the Ways of Getting the Treasure). V International Conference Demonology as Semiotic System. Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia.

Eiviler, K. (2018). “Ritual and Theatre: Anthropology of the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed”. II International Scientific Conference Anthropology of Everything for 10 minutes. Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia.

Eiviler, K. (2018). “К вопросу о переводе драматургических текстов на примере пьесы Ивана Вырыпаева `УФО`” (Towards the Problematics of a Theatre Drama Translation, on the example of the Translation of Ivan Vyrypaev`s Drama the `NLO`). III International Scientific Conference for Students Translation – an Object of Scientific Research. Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia.
* Award: winner in the category “The most original and innovative topic”.

Eiviler, K. (2018). “Легенда о невесте из Елашници” (The Legend of the Bride of
Jelasnica). International Conference of the Young Scientists Folklore and Cultural
Anthropology Today.
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia.

Eiviler, K. (2015). “О нестајању `повлашћених простора`, или: концепција простора у савременим словенским драмама породичне тематике] (: On the Disappearance of the “Privileged Space”, or: The Concept of Space in the Contemporary Slavic Plays Dealing with the Theme of Family). International Conference for Students of Comparative Literature – Prva stran. Faculty of Philosophy, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Eiviler, K. (2015). “Сатана као антихерој у савременој руској, српској и хрватској
књижевности” (Satan as an (Anti)Hero in the Contemporary Russian, Serbian and Croatian Literature). International Conference for Students of Slavic Studies – Jučer, danas, sutraslavistika. Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia.

Congresses

Eiviler, K (2021). «Там камни копают!»: к вопросу конструирования сакрализованного пространства в вернакулярных практиках.(“They Dig Stones There!”: Towards the Question of Construction of Sacralized Space in Vernacular Practices). 14th Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia (online). Tomsk (Russia).

Eiviler, Kristina (2019). "От ужаса к смеху: К прагматике демонологических преданий о тенцах на примере нарративов Тимокского района восточной Сербии." (“From Horror to Laughter: Towards Pragmatics of Demonological Stories about Tenci on the Example of Timok Region in the East Serbia”)13th Congress of Anthropologists and Ethnologists of Russia. Kazan (Russia).

Colloquia

Eiviler, K (2022). “Exploring the Agency of Venerated Objects: Concepts, Practices, Ecologies” Colloquium of the Postdoc and PhD students, ISEK - Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Eiviler, K (2021). “Performing the silence and making it accountable: co-creating the norm in vernacular practices with stones”. Data session at the University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

Eiviler, K & Kesselheim, W (2021). “Input: Blind spots in current research on linguistic landscapes”. Workshop "Linguistic landscapes - Schwerpunkt Schweiz/Languages in CH". URPP Language and Space Colloquium. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Eiviler, K (2021). “The Spaces of Veneration. Linguistic Aspects of the Landscape Appropriation in the Cases of Central Russia and Central Switzerland”. URPP Language and Space colloquium. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Eiviler, K (2020). “Cross-Cultural Analysis of Interaction between People and
Unconventional Places and Objects of Veneration”. Colloquium of the Postdoc and PhD students, ISEK - Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Eiviler, K (2019). "Analysing Interaction between People, Objects and Places of Veneration" ZuSaM Colloquium (University of Zurich, University of Salzburg, University of Munich). Georg-von-Vollmar-Akademie e.V., Kochel am See, Germany.

Panels

"Robot Priests: Religion, Ritual and Spirituality under the Lens of AI", Panel convenor with Raluca Mateoc (University of Geneva), at the 20th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR), Vilnius, Lithuania. 

Education, exchange studies and research visits

Education

2019 – present

PhD in General Linguistics
Video Group, URPP Language and Space
University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Research topic: Spaces, Object, People: Cross Cultural Analysis of Multimodal Interaction between People and Unconventional Places and Objects of Veneration.
Supervised by PD Dr. Klaus Wolfgang Kesselheim

2017 – 2019

MA in Social Anthropology and Ethnology
Center for Social Anthropology
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia

Thesis: Monuments and the Places of Veneration in Moscow: Commemoration, Rituals, Mythology.
Supervised by Prof. Dr. Olga Borisovna Hristoforova.

2018 – 2019

MA in Serbian Literature and Language
Faculty of Philosophy, specialization: Folkloristics
University in Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

Thesis: Contemporary Oral Narratives about Demonic Creatures in the Timok Region.
Supervised by Prof. Dr. Ljiljana Pesikan-Ljustanovic.

2012 – 2018

BA in Russian Language and Literature,
Faculty of Philosophy
University in Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

2010 – 2015

BA of Serbian Literature and Language,

Faculty of Philosophy
University in Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

Exchange studies

January 2017 – June 2017

CEEPUS Student Exchange Program (spring semester)
Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Russian Language and Literature,
University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

September 2016 – January 2017

Erasmus+ Student Exchange Program (winter semester)
Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Slovenian Language and Literature,
University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia

Research visits

July 2023 CA research group, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Scot Barnes, at Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia)
July 2023 Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Prof. Dr. Sarah Pink, at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). Talk: Eiviler, K. "Robotics and religion(s): A cross-disciplinary approach to the first meetings with the BlessU-2 Robot". 
October 2022 Rutgers University Conversation Analysis Lab (RUCAL), Prof. Dr. Galina Bolden, at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA).

 

Summer schools, workshops, scholarships and grants

Summer schools

2021

Summer School in Qualitative Methods

Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland

2021

Methods in Conversation Analysis (online)

University of Your, UK

2021

Video-based research: Visualizing multimodality in human interaction (online)

University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

2020

Zurich Online School in Multimodal Interaction Analysis (ZOSMIA)

Role: main organiser and event coordinator

Financial support: Graduate school and the URPP Language and Space, University of Zurich

2020

Interubjecivity in (inter)action: a multisensorial phenomenon

University of Oulu, Finland (online)

2020 Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School – DHOx2020 University of Oxford, UK (online)
2019

19th International School in Folkloristics and Cultural Anthropology, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Russia.
Center for Contemporary Research, Typology and Semiotics of Folklore
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia

2017

Let the Youth Play the Lead – Theatre Techniques for Social Problems
Solidarités Jeunesses
“La Maison des Bateleurs”, Montendre, Poitou- Charentes, France.

2014

Summer school of Serbian folklore II (Stara Planina)
Faculty of Philosophy
University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

Workshops

“SPEAK UP! Session on Decolonizing, decapitalizing, and decompartmentalizing Academia” (2021). Samira Ibnelkaid (PostDoc at the University of Oulu, Finland) and Kristina Eiviler (role: organizer, presenter, and moderator), University of Zurich, Switzerland.

“Video-based research” (2021). University of Oulu, Finland (online).

"Open Access and Audiovisual Sources" (2019), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

 

Scholarships and grants

2020 UZH Graduate school funding for self-organized working groups. Financial support for organizing Zurich Online School in Multimodal Interaction Analysis (ZOSMIA)

2017 – 2019

Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education Excellence Scholarships for Foreign Students

Fieldwork research

2022 Museum for Design, Zurich (Switzerland)
2021 Sattel-Hochstuckli, Schwyz region (Switzerland)
2020 Sattel-Hochstuckli, Schwyz region (Switzerland)

2019

Pereslavl-Zalessky, Yaroslavl Region (Russia), Moscow and Moscow region, Russia

2018

Zaplanje region (Serbia), Tula region (Russia), Samara region (Russia)

2014 – 2017

Timok region, Serbia

Additional competences

Digital competence

Basic R, Adobe Premier Pro CC, FinalCut, MAXQDA, EXMARaLDA, ELAN

Student positions and memberships

Translations

2020

Zhanar Kusainova “A Bird in the Pocket”, theatre drama (from Russian to English, for the Zurich English-Speaking Theatre).

2018

Матеја Комел Сној, Поезија, коју можемо читати и затворених очију (Mateja Komel Snoj “The Poetry That We Can Read Even with Our Eyes Closed”), literature essay (translation from Slovenian to Serbian). Летопис Матице српске, Књига 503, свескa 4, април 2019.
Link to the translation: http://www.maticasrpska.org.rs/letopis/letopis_503_4/04%20
Komel%20Snoj.pdf

2018

Иван Вирипаjев “НЛО” (Ivan Ivan Vyripaev “NLO”), theatre drama (from Russian to Serbian, for the Theatre of the Student's Cultural Center in Nis, Serbia).

2016

Преснjаков Владимир и Олег “Тероризам” (Presnyakov Vladimir and Oleg “Terrorism”), III act of the theatre drama (from Russian to Serbian, for the “ArtFrakcija” production, Youth Theatre in Novi Sad and Centre for Culture in Inđija, Serbia).

Films

2020

Who is (not) Swiss?” (2020, 4`4``, language Swiss German). Team: Kristina Eiviler (UZH), Petra Sidler (FHNW & NCCR – on the move) and Monika Molnar (UZH)

*winner: 4th Global Science Film Festival, category: Scientists-as-Filmmakers

2017

Молитва под Миджором” (20`, language: Russian, Serbian)
The short ethnographical documentary “The Prayer under the Midzor Peak” is a result of a field work that I did in 2014, in Timok region (east-central Serbia). It captures the customs that local people perform on the day of the village saint, Saint George (5th May).
The movie was played at the II Festival of Students’ Documentary Movie – Magidov-Fest, organized by Moscow House of Nationalities, in December 2017, Russia.

Languages

Serbian (native); English, Russian (fluent); Spanish, Slovenian, German (intermediate); Polish, French, Finnish, Turkish (elementary).

Weiterführende Informationen

Best Student Paper Award

Best Student Paper Award  at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA) 2023

ZOSMIA 2020 official webpage

Sattel-Hochstuckli fieldwork photograph

Religious Robots? A photograph from the “Planet digital” exhibition

Global film award “Who is (not) Swiss?”