Courtney T. Wittekind

Courtney T. Wittekind is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. Before joining the faculty at Purdue, she held postdoctoral positions at Yale University with the Program in Agrarian Studies and the Council on Southeast Asia Studies. She teaches courses in anthropology and ethnographic methods, science and technology studies, and media studies and has taught at Yale, Tufts, Harvard, and Parami University in Myanmar. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice from Harvard in 2022.

Wittekind’s scholarship addresses three global transformations: uneven urban development, the growth of speculative investment, and the rapid expansion of digital and networked technologies. Emblematic of these interests is the topic of her forthcoming book: an ambitious, state-led proposal to build a 20,000-acre "new city" outside Yangon, Myanmar's largest city and former capital. A key node in China's Belt and Road Initiative, this new city was branded as a "people's city," fit for Myanmar’s highly-anticipated—if ultimately short-lived—democratic era. Her book shows how small-scale farmers who lived in the area slated for redevelopment try—and often fail—to harness new city plans for their own purposes. Her work on speculation, risk, and new media has been published in leading anthropology and geography journals.

Wittekind has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Blakemore Foundation, among others. She received an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.Phil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

AI Affiliation

Courtney T. Wittekind is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. Before joining the faculty at Purdue, she held postdoctoral positions at Yale University with the Program in Agrarian Studies and the Council on Southeast Asia Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard in 2022 with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. Previously, she completed an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.Phil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
 
 Wittekind’s scholarship addresses three global transformations: uneven urban development, the growth of speculative investment, and the rapid expansion of new technologies in and beyond Southeast Asia. Her first book on the New Yangon City project—a 20,000-acre urban development outside Yangon, Myanmar—traces the growth of social media as an avenue for high-stakes land speculation in the region. Her articles, published in leading anthropology and geography journals, explore the new forms of vulnerability created when speculative markets move online. By applying social scientific frameworks to the study of science and technology, her work traces the discourses, aspirations, and consequences that surface alongside new technologies, focusing on themes that include network effects and scale; hype and virality; and scamming, speculation, and risk.