Sander Hölsgens (PhD, UCL) is an anthropologist and educator. As Assistant Professor at the Leiden Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, he teaches practice-led courses in visual ethnography and audiovisual culture.

More information about Sander Hölsgens

Sander Hölsgens’ current research continues to explore:

• the anthropology of skateboarding
• engaged and critical pedagogies
• phenomenologies of skill acquisition
• emerging and disappearing media technologies

Students writing theses on these areas of study are particularly invited to reach out for supervisory support.

Sander is one of the founding members of Pushing Boarders, a platform tracing the social impact of skateboarding worldwide. He curates the Rotterdam-based film festival Field Recordings and is part of the Film Place Collective. Sander acted as the Visual and New Media editor of Cultural Anthropology between 2015 and 2019, and is the author of ‘Skateboarding in Seoul: A Sensory Ethnography’ (2021).

Prior to joining Leiden, Sander taught at University College London, where he co-ran The Bartlett Film+Place+Architecture Network and contributed extensively to the UCL Writing Lab. At the University of Groningen, he completed two NWO-funded research projects: 1) Exploring Journalism’s Limits: Enacting and Theorising the Boundaries of the Journalistic Field (postdoc, 2018-2019) and 2) Documenting complexity: Intersections of Documentary, Activism and Technological Innovation (co-applicant and postdoc, 2019-2021).

Publications