Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Primary Academic Program: Anthropology

Academic Program Affiliation(s): Environmental Studies, Global and International Studies, Human Rights, Middle Eastern Studies, Science, Technology, and Society

Biography: PhD, Columbia University, 2015. Professor Stamatopoulou-Robbins is an anthropologist with research interests in infrastructure, waste, environment, platform capitalism, and the home. Her first book, Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), has won five major book awards and explores what happens when, as Palestinians are increasingly forced into proximity with their own wastes and with those of their occupiers, waste is transformed from “matter out of place,” per prevailing anthropological wisdom, into matter with no place to go—or its own ecology. Her current book, Controlled Alienation: Airbnb and the Future of Home (under contract with Duke University Press), explores the joint world-making of austerity and home-sharing in Greece. Other publications include pieces in Environment and Planning E, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Arab Studies Journal, The Jerusalem Quarterly, Anthropology News, Thresholds, and The New Centennial Review. Her film Waste Underground (with videographer Ali al-Deek) premiered at the Sharjah Biennial in Ramallah in 2017. She serves on the editorial teams of Cultural Anthropology and MERIP. Her research has been awarded funding by the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Wenner Gren Foundation, Columbia University, and the Palestinian American Research Council. At Bard since 2013.
2021 — Publication
Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. "Airbnb And/As Supply: Failed Listings, Scraped Data, and Refugee Relocation." Thresholds 49 (2021): 158–163.
Website: https://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00739/98637/Airbnb-And-As-Supply-Fai

2021 — Publication
Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia C. "Failure to build: Sewage and the choppy temporality of infrastructure in Palestine." Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 4, no. 1 (2021): 28–42.
Website: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2514848620908193

2020 — Publication
Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. "Occupied Home-Sharing: Airbnb in Palestine." Jerusalem Quarterly 83 (2020): 54–78.
Website: https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1650614

2019 — Publication
Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia. Waste Siege: The Life of Infrastructure in Palestine. Stanford University Press, 2019.
Website: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=27959

Phone: 845-758-7201
Website: https://sophiastamatopoulourobbins.com
Email:
Location: Hopson
Office: 304