Viola Schreer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology. She has a long-term interest in human-environmental relations in Indonesia, particularly Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, where she has worked on indigenous responses to frontier dynamics, hope and future-making, more-than-human politics, the ‘Anthropocene,’ and the role of social sciences in conservation. Her current research focuses on waste pollution in Indonesia.
Viola gained a PhD in social anthropology in 2016 from the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent, UK. Her doctoral thesis Longing for prosperity in Indonesian Borneo examined how indigenous Ngaju Dayak villagers in Central Kalimantan dealt with to the dramatic socio-economic and environmental changes brought about by resource extraction. Building on extant scholarship on hope, Viola’s thesis documented the less visible, affective dimensions of frontier-making. Following her PhD, she held a postdoctoral position at the University of Passau to investigate Indonesia’s organic farming movement as part of the BMBF-funded project IndORGANIC. And from 2018 to 2023, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded project “The Global Lives of the Orangutan” at Brunel University London that investigated the frictions and inequalities within the global nexus of orangutan conservation.
Viola is currently co-editing a volume on Grassroots Environmental Politics in Anthropocene Southeast Asia and has co-edited a special section on Heroes and Villains in the Anthropocene. Her research has moreover been published in various social sciences and conservation journals, including the American Ethnologist, Ethnos, Environmental Humanities, Geoforum, Conservation & Society, Conservation Biology, Oryx, and People & Nature. In addition to her academic engagement, Viola has worked as a trainer to further integrate the social sciences into conservation practice. As part of her applied work, she co-created various education materials for organisations, donors, and researchers working at the interface between biodiversity conservation and communities, including Field Reflections: Stories of Community Engagement in Indonesian Borneo and Using Ethnographic Research for Social Engagement: A Toolkit for Orangutan (and Other) Conservationists.
Chua, L., Schreer, V., and P. Thung (accepted). What care takes: ripple affects and more-than-human politics in a conservation frontier. JRAI: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Schreer, V., Thung, P., Freeman, S., Anirudh, N., Campbell-Smith, G., Eghenter, C., and S. Spehar (2025). Doing social science with conservation: Co-reflexivity on the project model in conservation. Oryx: The International Journal of Conservation, 59(1): 81-90. (Editor’s pick)
Fair, H. and V. Schreer (2025). Lively Gifts and Exclusive Commodities: Rethinking Encounter Value in Orangutan Conservation. Geoforum, 159: 104213.
Schreer, V. (2024). In Search of Fire Villains: Blame and Willful Blindness in Indonesia’s Peatlands. Environmental Humanities 16(3): 746-765.
Chua, L. and V. Schreer (2024). “Introduction: Heroes and Villains in the Anthropocene.” Environmental Humanities 16(3): 697-708.
Schreer, V. (2023). The absent agent: Orangutans, communities, and conservation in Indonesian Borneo. Conservation & Society 21 (1): 17-27.
Chua, L., Fair, H., Schreer, V., Stępień, A. and P. Thung (2021). ‘Only the Orangutans Get a Life Jacket’: Uncommoning Responsibility in a Global Conservation Nexus. American Ethnologist 48(4): 370-385.
Schreer, V. (2021). ‘Only gold can become hope’: Resource Rushes and Risky Conviviality in Indonesian Borneo. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 86(5): 920-942,
