Research 

I am interested in the chaos and creativity that emerge during social, cultural, and technological transitions. Whether speaking of the end of political systems like communism, infrastructural systems like the electric grid, economic systems like whaling, or everything systems like oil what unites my work is an abiding concern for both the inventive creativity and the normative impulses that systemic collapse begets. What is the nature of renewal, I ask, and what do people, diversely, make of things when all that is solid fades unexpectedly into air.

 Currently 

Gretchen Bakke was awarded a Heisenberg Position in 2022; she splits her time between the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) and the Institute for European Ethnology (IfEE) Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

Her e-mail address is bakke@uchicago.edu

 CV 

Click here.

 Speaking Engagements 

For speaking engagements, represented by: Bright Sight Group.