Manon Borel is a Doctoral Researcher in Social Anthropology at the University of Bern (Switzerland). She studied international relations and social anthropology at the University of Geneva, the University of Bern, and St. Petersburg State University. Her doctoral research on the Armenian borderlands with Turkey is supervised by Prof. Dr. Sabine Strasser (University of Bern) and Prof. Dr. Mathijs Pelkmans (London School of Economics). Manon’s research interests include border studies, migration studies, the anthropology of time and infrastructure, Armenian studies, as well as feminist and affect theory.
In her doctoral research, Manon Borel ethnographically explores life in the northern Armenian borderlands with Turkey. Based on long-term fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2023, she investigates everyday life amid the anticipation of a possible border opening. Taking a relational-affective approach, Manon examines what it means to live in the not-yet. Drawing on feminist and sensory methodologies, she explores the connection of everyday life and geopolitics, how borders and boundaries are produced, reproduced, blurred, and undone in the ordinary.
