In the inaugural episode of the series, Ipshita talks to Dr Stefanie Mauksch about the ways in which economic anthropology and ethnographic research can help us understand the diverse experiences of entrepreneurship. Stefanie discusses her own professional path to studying entrepreneurship and her experiences doing ethnographic work at entrepreneurship events in different geographical and cultural contexts. One of the themes of this conversation is the friction between globally standardized discourses and localized, experiential life-worlds of entrepreneurship that create dynamic, shifting subjectivities among entrepreneurial actors.

Stefanie Mauksch teaches Anthropology at Leipzig University, Germany. She has conducted research on the global social entrepreneurship movement, startup communities and the effects of entrepreneurial initiatives, preferably in the Global South. Her research is largely focused on how entrepreneurship shapes local action in contexts of development, in particular Nepal and Sudan, and in specific social fields, such as meanings and experiences of dis/ability. She publishes her work in both disciplines of Anthropology and Organization Studies.