About
As a full professor of anthropology, Filip De Boeck conducts field research in urban communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His research interests mainly focus on a wide variety of interactions between social worlds and material infrastructures in rapidly developing non-Western urban contexts, be it a megalopolis such as Kinshasa, or secondary towns in Central Africa. His research practice is further characterized by critical collaborations with visual artists and curators in which multi-vocal interventions (through books, films, video installations, exhibitions) are designed that do not allow themselves to be reduced to specifically colonial or post-colonial contexts, but explore the potential of a different kind of collective and decolonial knowledge production about the city.
Awards
- Fellow of the Belgian Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences (KAOW) 1996 -. (https://www.kaowarsom.be/nl/node/205)
- Venice Golden Lion Award 2004 (Issued by the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale for best installation with the exhibition "Kinshasa. Tales of the imaginary city" in the Belgian Pavillion)
- Council Member of the International African Institute (London), 2006-
- Henry Lavachery Award 2008 (Issued by Académie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique for the book publication: Filip De Boeck & Marie-Françoise Plissart, 2005. Kinshasa. Récits de la ville invisible. Bruxelles: Renaissance du Livre.)
- Mirror Award 2010 (Issued by Patrick De Spiegelaere Fund for the ethnographic film Cemetery State -F. De Boeck director. 70’ – Lingala/French/English/Dutch) (https://f-pds.be/spiegelprijs-2010/)
- Adriaan Gerbrands Laureate 2019 (Issued by Research Center for Material Culture in collaboration with the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (Leiden University))
- Selection for the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019 (with Biennial Project The Tower: A Concrete Utopia, 2016, Single-channel video, co-authored with Sammy Baloji (70:19 min., sound) (https://2019.chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/current/contributors/sammy_baloji_filip_de_boeck)
Relevant Publications
- De Boeck, Filip and Marie-Françoise Plissart. 2004. Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City. Ghent /Tervuren: Ludion / Royal Museum for Central Africa. ISSN: 90-5544-528-2
- De Boeck, Filip. 2011. Inhabiting Ocular Ground: Kinshasa's Future in the Light of Congo's Spectral Urban Politics. Cultural Anthropology 26 (2): 263-186. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01099.x
- De Boeck, Filip and Sammy Baloji. 2016. Suturing the City. Living Together in Congo’s Urban Worlds. London: Autograph ABP. ISSN: 9781899282197