TEAM

Juan Antonio Rubio Ardanaz

Anthropologist basque-canadian (Bilbao, 1956).

Trained in anthropology at the University of Montreal (1983-1996), and graduated during this period (M.Sc. in anthropology in 1987, and Ph.D. in anthropology in 1995). He specialized in the fields of ethnomuseology, ethnicity and immigration, and economic anthropology, areas that he complemented with other studies of archaeology and philosophy at the universities of Québec and McGill. Under the supervision of Pierre Beaucage, he wrote a doctoral thesis entitled Los pescadores de bajura de Santurtzi, cambios económicos y socioculturales (siglos XIX y XX) (The fishermen of the Santurtzi fleet, economic and sociocultural changes [nineteenth and twentieth centuries]). In this last stage of his studies, he received a Grant for Excellence from the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the University of Montreal (1994-1995). At the same university, he taught for the first time while he was still training. Subsequently, he lectured in social and cultural anthropology at the UNED (Bizkaia), the Public University of Navarre, the University of Deusto and the University of the Basque Country. His knowledge and interest in society and maritime culture led him to Bilbao Maritime Museum, where he worked as head of heritage, and directed the museum project that would lead to the first permanent exhibition (1999-2001). He has taught ethnomuselogy at the University of Deusto and worked as tenured lecture in Social Anthropology at the University of Extremadura (2003). 

He has carried out field work in Québec and the Basque Country, and has participated in a range of research projects, some in Mexico and Peru. In relation to the projects in Mexico and Peru, he collaborated on the work Etnociencia Nahua. Plantas medicinales indígenas. Cuetzalan, Puebla (P. Beaucage. Puebla, 1988) and published Del sueño amoroso a la realidad (Montreal, 1989). His dedication to maritime anthropology is particularly notable, as a result of which the following books have been published: La antropología marítima subdisciplina de la antropología sociocultural. Teoría y temas para una aproximación a la comunidad pescadora de Santurtzi (Bilbao, 1994); La vida arrantzale en Santurtzi. Cambios económicos y socioculturales entre los pescadores de bajura (ss. XIX y XX) (Bilbao, 1997); and Lemanes, sardineras y pescadores. Realidades marítimas en perspectiva antropológica (Barcelona, 2006). His interest in research on fishing, from a theoretical, practical and applied perspective, can be seen in papers such as La antropología marítima vasca. Revisión de los planteamientos, intereses teóricos y temas de estudio (1996); La pesca: una realidad y una problemática vigentes, objeto de estudio para la antropología social (2000); and Diferentes etapas en la configuración de la práctica pesquera en Orio (Gipuzkoa), Ramón Solabarrieta, Lino (2000), published in Itsas Memoria. Revista de Estudios Marítimos del País Vasco. He has contributed to other journals, including Ethtnica, Zientziartekoa, Revue de Sciences Sociales Ecleigma, Cahiers by the Association Canadienne des Sociologues et Anthropologues de Langue Française, Cuadernos de Etnología y Etnografía de Navarra, Bermeo, Sukil, Letras de Deusto, Narria, Kobie, Lan Harremanak. Revista de Relaciones Laborales, Revista Española de Antropología Americana, and the Revista da Comisión Galega do Quinto Centenario. As a result of his first doctoral thesis supervised by the anthropologist Joxemartin Apalategi Begiristain, which was presented at the University of the Basque Country (1988), he published the following papers in the two last journals cited above: Apuntes para una antropología de la emigración: limitación y demarcación del grupo étnico gallego de Montreal (1989) and Estudio de la comunidad etnocultural Gallega de Montreal (1989). After his period of university education, he was appointed president of the Anthropology and Ethnography Area of Eusko Ikaskuntza. In this role, he helped to organize anthropological symposiums and meetings on subjects such as the anthropology of food, urban anthropology, the anthropology of religion and maritime anthropology. In the area of maritime anthropology, he has edited monographs entitled Comunidades pesqueras (1997), La pêche et la mer en Euskal Herria (2002) and La pesca y el mar: cambio sociocultural y económico (2005) for the journal “Zainak. Cuadernos de Antropología-Etnografía". He collaborates with museums and public and private institutions, and notably was appointed to the Council on Common Law of Extremadura and Anthropology, which is attached to the Assembly of Extremadura.