Laura Stark

Laura Stark

Professor
Unit
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department / Division
Department of History and Ethnology
Room number
Email
laura.stark@jyu.fi
Mobile
+358400247439
Postal address
Seminaarinkatu 15
Fields of science
520 Other social sciences

Biography

I am a professor of ethnology and my current research interests are gender, sexuality and poverty in urban Africa. My current research project is ACACIA - LGBTQI+ and Street-level bureaucrats: Assessing Motives, Violence and Possibilities for Collective Advocacy in East Africa. It will study these issues in Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda.


Research interests

Using 230 interviews with mostly Muslim women, I study poverty and gender in urban Tanzania, focusing on transactional sex, child marriage and forced marriage, and how the labour of the poor is reproduced in the neoliberal city. Marriage under 18 is common in most of Africa. Many girls themselves want to marry young. Why? Social, economic and cultural pressures together provide an explanation.

Publications

Publication
2025

Queer and Trans Life. Berghahn Books.
Stark, Laura
Publication
2024

Women’s Agency and Mobile Communication Under the Radar. Routledge.
Stark, Laura
Publication
2024

Routledge.
Engström, Viljam
Mustaniemi-Laakso, Maija
Stark, Laura
Publication
2023

Reading matters. Universitätsverlag Göttingen.
Stark, Laura
Publication
2023

What the Hela?
Stark, Laura
Publication
2022

Power and Informality in Urban Africa Ethnographic Perspectives. Zed Books.
Stark, Laura
Teppo, Annika
Publication
2022

Power and Informality in Urban Africa Ethnographic Perspectives. Zed Books.
Stark, Laura
Publication
2022

Power and Informality in Urban Africa Ethnographic Perspectives. Zed Books.
Tesfamariam, Segen Yainshet
Alemayehu, Elias Yitbarek
Stark, Laura
Publication
2022

Zed Books.
Stark, Laura
Teppo, Annika Björnsdotter
Publication
2022

Kulttuurien tutkimuksen menetelmät. Tietolipas. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Fingerroos, Outi
Stark, Laura

Projects

project logo with an acacia tree in the circle and in pan-African colors of yellow, green and red as a circle around the name of the project
Project

ACACIA Project - LGBTQI+ and Street-level Bureaucrats: Assessing Motives, Violence and Possibilities for Collective Advocacy in Sub-Saharan Africa

ACACIA project produces new theory on the social control of stigmatized groups in developing countries and will refine our theoretical concept of bureaucrats’ adaptation to multivocal authority.