Elisa Tamburo is an anthropologist, writer, and educator. Her interests intersect urban, political, and environmental anthropology in East Asia (China and Taiwan) and East Africa (Kenya), with specialized expertise in transnational transformation across cities in rapidly urbanizing contexts. As a Marie Curie Global Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, jointly with the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, she is currently leading a research project titled “URBANEG – Negotiating the City: Urban planning and dwelling amidst China-built urban infrastructure in Nairobi, Kenya. “ Her current book project explores how Chinese-built infrastructure is transforming urban life in Nairobi, reconfiguring practices of urban citizenship, modes of governance, and expressions of sovereignty across multiple interconnected scales.

Her first book, Exiled in the City: Belonging, Loss, and the Politics of Relocation in a Taipei Military Village, examines what happens when a political ideal fails. It centers on the Kuomintang’s (KMT) failed China reunification project through the experiences of veterans in Taiwan’s military dependents’ villages — temporary settlements built in 1949 for KMT military personnel and their families. As the last living witnesses of the KMT’s project of retaking mainland China, these veterans embody the fading legacy of a collapsed nationalist vision, in which their resettlement in permanent homes in their senior years epitomizes the failed patronage between the state and its most loyal support group. Her book manuscript has been reviewed by Cornell University Press.

She obtained her Ph.D. in sociocultural Anthropology at SOAS, University of London (2019).