Dr Annelou Ypeij

Assistant Professor

RESEARCH THEME: ANTROPHOLOGY

Annelou Ypeij has been assistant professor at CEDLA since January 2003. She graduated cum laude in anthropology at Utrecht University in 1990. Five years later she defended her dissertation at the same university. The subject concerned the informal economy of Lima. From 1997 to 2002, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam on poverty within the welfare state in Amsterdam

RESEARCH INTEREST

Broadly formulated, her research interests encompass poverty, social mobility, gender, ethnicity and livelihood strategies. Annelou Ypeij has done extensive fieldwork in Peru and The Netherlands. In Lima, Peru, she analysed why female micro-entrepreneurs working in the informal economy earn structurally less than their male counterparts do. In The Netherlands she studied single motherhood and poverty in the welfare state. Currently she is working on two research projects. The first one centres on tourism in the Cusco-Machu Picchu region, the impact of tourism on local communities, and the way people seize new economic opportunities in the tourism industry. Annelou Ypeij focuses on the ethnic and gender identities of women and men working in the lowest echelons of the labour market and their livelihood strategies. The second research project concerns a study on gender, family relations and social mobility in the urban context. In the Cono Norte of Lima she is collecting life histories to better understand the processes of national and international migration, changing gender and ethnic identities, social mobility and other family dynamics. She is also involved in making a documentary by visual anthropologist Sharis Coppens about the Peruvian rockband Uchpa. See www.chichafilms.nl and www.chichafilms.nl/in-ontwikkeling/.