Lesley Nicole Braun is Senior Lecturer and Principal Ivestigator on an SNF-funded research project (2020-2024). Thematically, her research investigates the gendered dimensions of transnational mobility, and how gender and sexuality impact, as well as shape women’s activities in the public sphere. Braun’s research also encompasses the propagation of narratives in digital spaces related to transnational trade, entrepreneurial migration, and central African infrastructural development. Her methodology pairs traditional ethnography with the recognition that platform capitalism now renders strategies of informal trading and irregular migration subject to large-scale data capture.

Braun’s research in digital anthropology examines the impact on visual anthropology's methods, emphasizing the epistemic implications and the evolving role of researchers. Her work highlights the necessity of considering algorithmic influence and proposes that anthropologists take on the role of "curators" to creatively navigate the complexities of the digital realm.

Her work has been appeared in a wide-range of journals such as the Journal of African Arts, Ethnos, Africa, and the Canadian Journal of African Studies. Her current project entitled Travail-Travel-Traders, funded by a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Ambizione Grant, is premised on considering the lives of women involved in trade between the African continent and China. Further, it explores the digital practices and cultures emergent from transnational South-South trading networks during the pandemic.

Braun holds a PhD in Anthropology from the Université de Montréal, in Canada. She is the recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Award (given by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), and her research has been funded by Quebec’s Society and Culture Research Foundation (The Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture), the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Leibnitz Foundation in Germany, and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

• Gender and Sexuality
• Women and Mobility
• Popular Culture
• Dance
• Social Change

• Democratic Republic of Congo
• China