Dr. des. Thomas John

Thomas John is an anthropologist and filmmaker whose principal focus is visual and media anthropology. He likes to explore different strategies for the representation of social realities and human cultural experiences. He received his BA in social anthropology and comparative religious science from the University of Münster and an MA in Visual and Media Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin. He was a PhD student at the Latin American Institute (FU) and a member of the DFG-funded International Research Training Group ‘Between Spaces’. Movements, Actors and Representations of Globalisation’. In his doctoral research, he investigated the indigenous media and art scene in southern Mexico.
Thomas has taught Visual Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (University of Münster) since summer term 2013. He has been a research associate at the Department (Nov. 2012-Aug. 2014) and in the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center SFB 1171 Affective Societies. Thomas co-designed the MA program ‘Visual Anthropology, Media and Documentary Practices’ with Prof. Helene Basu and the Universität Münster Professional School gGmbH. In 2013, he was co-curator of RE: Critical Dialogue on photography, film and the documentary arts. His film Darkmoon (2013) has been screened at about 15 festivals, such as DOCSDF, Ethnocineca, Salento International Independent Film Festival & more. It won the award for the best student film at the International Festival of Ethnographical Film (Belgrade).