Courtney Wittekind

Courtney T. Wittekind is a Postdoctoral Associate in Yale’s Program in Agrarian Studies. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice from Harvard University in 2022. Courtney’s current research lies at the intersection of work on political instability, speculative real estate investment, and agrarian change. Her book project, “’Time to Change:’ Speculating on ‘Transition’ in Yangon’s New City,” describes the unequal burdens facing residents of Southwest Yangon, Myanmar (Burma), an agricultural region set to be transformed into a sprawling “New Yangon City.” Through in-situ and digital ethnography conducted over 18 months, “Time to Change” follows residents of the 20,000-acre project area as they exchange not only plots of agricultural land but also visions of the radically new futures they will build in the coming “new city.” This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and Harvard’s Committee on General Scholarships. While at Yale, Courtney will continue to develop a second project exploring the role of social media in chains of speculation unfolding across Southeast Asia, developed with support from the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative and the Digital Transformations in Property and Development Matrix at the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to her dissertation research, Courtney is completing her first documentary film in connection with Harvard’s Critical Media Practice program and Sensory Ethnography Lab. She also serves as a co-founder and editor of Tea Circle, a forum for new perspectives from Burma/Myanmar.

Before beginning her PhD, she completed an MPhil in Anthropology at the University of Oxford as a 2014 Rhodes Scholar and member of St Antony’s Programme on Modern Burma Studies. She holds an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree in anthropology and fine art from Carnegie Mellon University.