| Philipp Budka has been and continues to be involved in a range of research projects within and beyond academia. These projects address: - transport and digital infrastructures, socio-technical relations, and infrastructural sovereignty in Arctic and Subarctic communities;
- Indigenous media, internet infrastructure, digital sovereignty, and digital practices in remote communities;
- digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and media from an anthropological perspective;
- ethnographic methods, digital ethnography, and collaborative research methodologies;
- environmental governance, sustainability, and community futures;
- media, mediation, and processes of socio-technical transformation;
- technology-enhanced learning and teaching in the social sciences.
Ongoing Projects -
Following the completion of the ERC Advanced Grant project InfraNorth, Philipp is currently focusing on the completion of two book manuscripts based on long-term ethnographic research in Canada. The first, under contract with the University of Toronto Press, examines transport infrastructures and infrastructural sovereignty in northern Manitoba. The second, to appear in the Palgrave Pivot series, explores the Indigenous internet platform MyKnet.org and its implications for digital sovereignty in northwestern Ontario. Building on these projects, he is developing a new comparative research agenda on infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and environmental governance while preparing research proposals for national and international funding agencies and grant programs. -
Together with Suzana Jovicic and Monika Palmberger, Philipp co-founded the Digital Ethnography Initiative (DEI) at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna. DEI is an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to advancing digital ethnography through research, teaching, and public engagement. It provides an open-access platform for sharing resources, publications, research projects, and blog contributions, while organizing talks, workshops, conference panels, and other events that foster dialogue on digital ethnographic theory, methods, and practice. By bringing together anthropological perspectives with interdisciplinary approaches, DEI supports researchers and students working on digital phenomena and with digital ethnographic methods, while contributing to broader debates on ethnography in increasingly digital societies. Completed Projects (Selection) -
Philipp was a research associate (postdoctoral researcher) in the ERC Advanced Grant project Building Arctic Futures: Transport Infrastructures and Sustainable Northern Communities (InfraNorth, PI Peter Schweitzer) at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, where he led the North American study region. InfraNorth examined the role of transport infrastructures in sustaining Arctic and Subarctic communities at a time of accelerating environmental, economic, and geopolitical transformation. Rather than treating railways, ports, airports, and roads as technical systems, the project investigated them as social, political, and environmental infrastructures that shape everyday life, regional development, and community futures. Particular attention was given to the question of whether infrastructure investments contribute to sustainable northern communities or reinforce externally driven models of resource extraction and temporary settlement. Combining long-term ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, participatory scenario workshops, surveys, mapping, and comparative analysis, the project developed an innovative relational approach to infrastructure that foregrounded the entanglements between material systems, governance, environmental change, and everyday social life. Working across the North American and European Arctic, InfraNorth demonstrated how infrastructures are continuously negotiated through practices of maintenance, repair, ownership, mobility, and future-making. Within the project, Philipp conducted extensive ethnographic research in northern Manitoba, Canada, focusing on the Hudson Bay Railway, the Port of Churchill, and the wider transport system of the western Hudson Bay region. His research introduced the concept of infrastructural sovereignty to analyze how questions of ownership, control, governance, and local decision-making become embedded in transport infrastructures. Based on multiple periods of fieldwork, interviews, surveys, archival research, and collaborative scenario workshops, his work showed how infrastructure disruption, community ownership, and climate change reshape northern livelihoods, governance, and imagined futures. The research has contributed to anthropological debates on infrastructure, sustainability, Arctic futures, and Indigenous and community-led governance, while informing local discussions on transport planning and regional development. To learn more about the project and its outcomes, see the special issues Narratives and Temporalities of Infrastructure: The Canadian Experience (Anthropologica, 2025) and Ethnographies of Infrastructure (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2026), as well as Philipp Budka's final project report, Infrastructural Sovereignty in Churchill, Manitoba: Transport Entanglements and Community Futures (2025). -
In cooperation with Birgit Bräuchler, Philipp edited Theorising Media and Conflict published by Berghahn Books in 2020. This is the second "Theorising media and ..." book in Berghahn's Anthropology of Media series. The aim of the series is to place media anthropology at the forefront of theoretical advances in both anthropology and media and communication studies.Theorising Media and Conflict brings together anthropologists as well as media and communication scholars to collectively address the elusive and complex relationship between media and conflict. Through epistemological and methodological reflections and the analyses of various case studies from around the globe, this volume provides evidence for the co-constitutiveness of media and conflict and contributes to their consolidation as a distinct area of scholarship. The volume is a result of the workshop "Theorising Media and Conflict" organized by John Postill and Philipp for the Media Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social and Cultural Anthropologists (EASA) at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna (23-24 Oct 2015).
The workshop was generously supported by EASA, the Austrian Research Association (ÖFG) and the University of Vienna's Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. -
With Martin Luger and Franz Graf, Philipp edited the volume Ritualisierung - Mediatisierung - Performance (V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press). Ritualization, mediatization and performance are conceptual tools to situate sociocultural change and continuity in everyday life and in specific contexts. By building on ethnographic case studies, this volume demonstrates that ritual, media and performative processes and practices are best explored in relation to each other. In addition to a general focus on transformation, this book includes contributions on selected aspects of the theory, methodology and history of social and cultural anthropology. Chapters about the history and ethnography of the Caribbean that discuss social status, religious practices and cultural remembrance, as well as texts that explore the connections between political, media and cultural spheres complement the volume. -
Philipp's dissertation project at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna investigated the creation, development, and utilization of broadband internet infrastructures, technologies, and services by indigenous people and communities in Northwestern Ontario, Canada.
(Budka, P. (2017). Indigenizing the Internet: Socio-technical change, technology appropriation and digital practices in remote First Nation communities in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Vienna.)
Research focused on
(a) the geographical, historical, and sociocultural contexts,
(b) the socio-technical infrastructures and relationships, and
(c) the digital practices and activities related to the local everyday appropriation of internet technologies. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and framed by media and digital anthropology, the project discussed the case of the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Kuhkenah Network (KO-KNET) and its most mundane internet service MyKnet.org.
KO-KNET is a First Nations owned and controlled internet organization and network which was established by a regional tribal council. Its main objective has been to connect the remote indigenous communities in Northwestern Ontario to the internet and with each other. Moreover, the network provides indigenous people with digital services, such as online education and e-health, with the aim to improve living conditions in the remote communities. MyKnet.org is a youth-based homepage system that has been built and developed around communities' need to maintain social ties and networks across great distance. The project demonstrated how digital infrastructures contributed to the connecting and networking of First Nations people and communities, and how this also enabled and strengthened social relationships between local communities and non-indigenous institutions. The analysis of digital practices that are closely related to the online social environment MyKnet.org emphasized the cultural and historical uniqueness of processes of technology appropriation in a remote and isolated area. As a community-based and community-focused service exclusively for First Nations people, MyKnet.org contributed to inter- and intra-community communication and interaction. Since the communities had no adequate telecommunications infrastructure until the middle of the 1990s, these developments can also be understood as processes of socio-technical change. By consistently including local populations in processes of infrastructure and technology development, KO-KNET also managed to localize the control over the construction, distribution, and use of digital infrastructures, technologies, and services. This, on the other hand, contributed to the socio-technical empowerment of First Nation communities in Northwestern Ontario. Thus, indigenous people and communities are able to participate in a self-determined manner to regional, national, and even global digital connectivity processes. Ethnographic research for this project was generously supported by grants from the University of Vienna (Research Scholarship and Academic Research Abroad), the German Foundation for Canadian Studies and the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council / KO-KNET. Results of this project are discussed in different publications. -
eSOWI-STEP (Joint Introduction Phase for Students in the Social Sciences), conducted at the eLearning Centre of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Vienna developed, implemented and evaluated a technology enhanced learning environment as well as best practice learning models for student beginners in the social sciences (funded by the University of Vienna). -
The project Strategien für vernetztes Lernen (Strategies for Networked Learning) was conducted at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna and resulted in
a) the production of learning material for anthropology students;
b) the creation of teaching concepts and models developed with the support of different online learning systems and digital tools;
c) the development of blended learning scenarios and strategies for students;
d) the assessment and evaluation of e-learning tools and scenarios (funded by the University of Vienna). -
OEKU-ONLINE (Interdisciplinary Content Pool for Economy, Culture and Environment) produced digital learning and teaching material on the interconnections between economy, ecology and culture. It was created at the Austrian Latin America Institute with a grant of the OeNB Anniversary Fund. -
Latin American Studies Online (LASON) established an interdisciplinary online learning system that provides learning and teaching content about Latin America. The learning system contributes to a virtual learning space, counterbalancing the lack of a Department of Latin American Studies at Austrian universities (funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research). For more information about the projects, please contact Philipp Budka. [page top] |