Dr. Paul Christensen

Paul Christensen is an Social Anthropologist specializing in religion, with a focus on Southeast Asia. He studied cultural and religious studies in Bremen and Yogyakarta and received his PhD in 2020 after completing his dissertation titled “Spirits in Cambodia: Existence, Power, and Ritual Practice” (funded by the German National Academic Foundation). He has been conducting research in Cambodia since 2011, with four fieldwork stays to date. After 12 years at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, he now works at the Institute for Methods and Methodological Foundations of the Social Sciences, where, in addition to his research, he teaches courses on a wide range of social science topics.
In his current project, “Lives in Erosion: Sand Extraction and the Transformation of Social, Ecological, and Spiritual Worlds in Cambodia”, he examines how industrial sand mining on the Mekong River is altering human-environment relationships.

Post-Doc Projekt
"Lives in Erosion: Sand Extraction and the Transformation of Social, Ecological, and Spiritual Worlds in Cambodia" (Abstract)

Dissertation:
"Spirits in Cambodia - Existence, Power and Ritual Practice" (download/order here)

Thematic foci