Uni:docs fellow Brigitte Möller in an interview

11.12.2017

Brigitte Möller is doctoral candidate at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and since October 2017 uni:docs fellow at the University of Vienna.

  • You are working on Translating Difference as Culture? Care for Elderly Turkish Migrants in Vienna and Amsterdam. Can you describe your research project in three sentences.

 

My project will cover elderly care for first-generation Turkish migrants in Vienna and Amsterdam. Ideas about health, illness and appropriate care are differently constructed by different social actors, and therefore the services sector is confronted with an increasing variety of illness interpretations and challenged in its capacity to cope with the diversity of the population. The project aims to explore the ways in which differences are translated as culture by investigating the interactions between carereceivers and caregivers.

  • What are your concrete plans for the next months?

In the upcoming months I aim to build up my knowledge about my research field and the research population by doing literature reviews and analysing policy documents. Moreover, I am taking language courses to further improve my German and Turkish skills before I start the fieldwork.

  • And finally, what do you like/value most about the University of Vienna? What is your favorite place at the University of Vienna?

My department has broad and varying research interests, which make it an inspirational and stimulating place to work. The staff carry with them extensive knowledge and experience. So far, I haven’t discovered ‘my favourite place’ at the university. But I heard that the roof of the NIG building gives a great view over the city, so I will check it out soon.

  • About Brigitte Möller

 

Although my name might expect otherwise, I come from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I received my BA and MA in medical anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. I have some working experience with organizations in the Netherlands that are occupied with issues related to migrants and health (care). For a while now I have the ambition of doing my own long-term research project, so I am really happy that I was granted the uni:docs scholarship at the University of Vienna.