Social anthropologist studies preparations for MAX IV and ESS

She likens researchers who travel round to use major research centres to a nomadic people. “The children grow up cracking physics jokes with one another. The families often mostly socialise with other travelling research families and don’t generally integrate very much in the city where they live, as they are only there temporarily”, says social anthropologist and Hedda Andersson Professor Sharon Traweek, who is at Lund University to study the preparations for ESS and MAX IV. In the 1970s, Sharon Traweek was one of the first anthropologists in the world to study environments in the West instead of native peoples in remote locations in the Third and Fourth World. It was researchers at major centres for high-energy physics, like ESS and MAX IV, which awakened her curiosity. For almost 30 years she has conducted field studies at centres in Japan, Switzerland and the USA. However, here in Lund is the first time she has been involved in the actual start-up phase.