Dr. Swetlana Torno

Swetlana Torno is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Research Group ‘Ageing in a Time of Mobility’. She obtained her doctoral degree in Social Anthropology from Heidelberg University having previously studied Anthropology, Geography and Biology at the Universities of Tübingen, Germany and McGill, Canada. Before joining the MPI-MMG, she was associated member of the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) and held a doctoral scholarship at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in Global Context’, both at Heidelberg University. Swetlana’s research focuses on ageing, mobility, intergenerational relations, care, and gender in Central Asia, where she has extensive ethnographic fieldwork experience. She is currently working on various dissertation-related publications, including her book manuscript Aspirations, Obligations, Linked Lives: Care and Women’s Life Courses in Tajikistan. Within the scope of her postdoctoral project, she investigates the relational mobility of elderly people from Tajikistan in the context of mass labor migration.

Research projects

• Ageing and (im)mobility: gendered experiences of growing old in Tajikistan in the context of mass labor migration

Publications

Journal Articles

Torno, S. (2023). Life-course management and social security in later life: Women’s biographical practices spanning generations and historical contexts in Tajikistan. Historical Social Research, 48(4), 104-130. doi:10.12759/hsr.48.2023.41

Roche, S., Torno, S. & Kazemi, S. R. (2020). Family Matters: The Making and Remaking of Family during Conflict Periods in Central Asia. Acta Via Serica 5(1), 153–186. https://doi.org/10.22679/avs.2020.5.1.006

Torno, S. (2018). How Relations Make Persons: Rituals Accompanying Childbirth and Socialization of Infants in Kyrgyzstan.” Central Asian Affairs 5(2), 111–133. https://doi.org/10.1163/22142290-00502002

Contributions to a Collected Edition

Torno, S. (2020 [2017]). Tajik in Content—Soviet in Form? Reading Tajik Political Discourse on and for Women. In S. Roche (Ed.) Тhe Family in Central Asia: New Perspectives (pp. 141-160). Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112209271-009

Torno, S. (2018). Таджикское по содержанию – советское по форме? Таджикский политический дискурс применительно к женщинам. [Tajik in Content — Soviet in Form ? Reading Tajik Political Discourse on and for Women.] In S. Roche (Ed.), Семья в Центральной Азии: Новые перспективы изучения. [Russian edition of Тhe Family in Central Asia] (pp. 112–128). Berlin: Klaus Schwarz.

Other

Torno, S. (2022). Book Review: Changes in Care: Aging, Migration, and Social Class in West Africa. Anthropology & Aging 43(1), 74–77. https://doi.org/10.5195/aa.2022.388

Torno, S. (2017). Interview: A Narrative about Care: How to Be a Woman in Tajikistan (in Russian and English). Central Asia Analytical Network. Retrieved from http://caa-network.org/archives/11021

Torno, S. (2015). Genderideologien zwischen Normalität und Realität. CARGO – Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 35, 66–73.

Torno, S. (2015). Zum Konzept der Person in kirgisischen Ritualen um Schwangerschaft, Geburt und während des ersten Lebensjahres. Master Thesis. University of Tübingen. http://dx.doi.org/10.15496/publikation-6053

Torno, S. & Costa, J. (2012). Study on Maternal and Infant Mortality. An Investigation of Reporting Processes and Perspectives of Medical Staff [Consultant Report]. Tajik-Swiss Health Reform and Family Medicine Support Project.