Research Associate at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK
Giovanni da Col has conducted fieldwork on luck, events, spiritual kinship, and witchcraft among Tibetans communities in Northwest Yunnan. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of HAU, Journal of Ethnographic Theory and two book series (Masterclass and Classics in Ethnographic Theory); and author of several peer-review articles while being the editor of collections such as the inaugural themed issue of HAU, titled Archaeologies of Kin(g)ship (with Stephane Gros); the 2012 Special Issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute titled The Return to Hospitality: Strangers, Guests and other Ambiguous encounters (with Matei Candea); the co-editor (with Caroline Humphrey) of two special issue of Social Analysis in 2012 titled Cosmologies of fortune: luck, vitality and uncontrolled relatedness and The Times of Fortune: Contingency, Moral Agency and the Anticipation of the Future. He is currently editing another collection titled Cosmopolitics of the invisible: spirit worlds and States of nature on China’s frontiers. Giovanni is also active as a travel writer in Italy: his first book, The Invisible Side of Paradise: Pilgrimages on Tibetan Borderlands has been released in 2009 by Egon Press and a second one, Tibetan Shadows (Ombre Tibetane), is forthcoming with Mondadori Electa Press.