Monica Eppinger comes to CSLS from Saint Louis University where she is an associate professor of law and of anthropology. One central focus of her work is the organization of space and how spatial conceptions, articulated through law, ground embodied experience and shape social relations. The book project she will work on during her time at CSLS, based on fieldwork in Ukraine since 2002, investigates "territoriality" -- human relations to land -- by examining ideas expressed in the domains of property and national security. This work looks at legislation, executive orders, and emerging social relations and practices, tracing territoriality through disputed distributions of property and fraught assertions of war. She has previously published in property theory; law of war and the national security apparatus; legal history and gender; and property and social precarity. Dr. Eppinger's first career was as a U.S. diplomat, for which she earned the State Department's individual Superior Honor award in 1999. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School (2006) and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from U.C. Berkeley (2010). Her leadership roles include chairing the Law and Anthropology Section of the American Association of Law Schools, serving as U.S. rapporteur on Property to the International Academy of Comparative Law, and directing SLU Law's Center for International and Comparative Law. She is proficient in Ukrainian and Russian and conversant in Chinese (Mandarin) and Hausa.
Job title:
CSLS Visiting Scholar
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