Dr Barker works on animation, childhood, and film culture in post socialist Eastern Europe and Eurasia. She has been especially keen to foster greater dialogue between linguistic anthropologists and interdisciplinary scholars of visual culture. Dr Barker has published her research in Anthropological Quarterly and Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. She has been a guest co-editor for two special issues in Semiotic Review, one on “Blank Faces” (2019) and another, in preparation, on the “Semiotics of the Image.” Ongoing research projects include transmediality in early Soviet children’s culture, World Expositions as media events, generic conventions of online personals ads, and the politics of amateurism among postsocialist film clubs. Before arriving at the LSE, Dr Barker was a Collegiate Assistant Professor in Social Sciences and Harper-Schmidt Fellow, with an affiliation in the Department of Anthropology, at the University of Chicago. She finished her PhD in linguistic anthropology at the University of Michigan.

GLA Course Title: Eastern European film culture