Malin Schlode (2025)

I am a PhD researcher in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, funded by the Derek Brewer Research Studentship. I completed my Master of Philosophy in Social Anthropology with distinction at the University of Oxford, investigating the identity and aspirations of digital nomads in Spain alongside their impact on the urban environment. At Oxford, I was involved in the Oxford Anthropology Podcast as a host and editor. My undergraduate studies were in Human, Social, and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge. 

My doctoral research focuses on the impact of over-tourism on housing precarity in Valencia, Spain. Particularly, I look at the visual-material culture of protest through Valencians’ use of graffiti, stickers, and posters to address the impact of unsustainable tourism on the urban environment, asserting their right to the city. Therefore, I investigate to what success the material environment is leveraged to communicate local understandings of the housing crisis to tourists and policymakers. I examine how visual-material protest becomes a home-making practice beyond the home and how local imaginations of sustainable tourism are articulated in the face of unsustainability. I am interested in multimodal research methodologies such as photography and exhibition-making that foster co-creative engagement with research participants and encourage reflexive storytelling.