Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic research. His research was awarded the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and is known for its critical insights and experimental style. Martínez has 15 years of ethnographic experience studying the materiality of political relations in Estonia, Georgia and Portugal. He currently works as a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow at the University of Murcia, Spain.
Martínez is the author of four monographs and has edited numerous volumes and theme issues, publishing in leading scholarly journals such as the Journal of Material Culture, Cultural Anthropology, Social Anthropology, JRAI, Cultural Geography, and Environment & Planning. His new book, The Future of Hiding (Cornell University Press, 2025), investigates the intersections of secrecy with energy infrastructure and identity politics in eastern Estonia.
Martínez is particularly interested in the material modes of knowing and leads the Materialities of Crisis Lab. The exhibitions he has curated showcase an innovative approach and ability to convey complex ideas to diverse audiences. His efforts to expand ethnographic ways of doing through experimental collaborations animated transdisciplinary research and creative ways of disseminating knowledge.
Martínez is particularly interested in the material modes of knowing and leads the Materialities of Crisis Lab. The exhibitions he has curated showcase an innovative approach and ability to convey complex ideas to diverse audiences. His efforts to expand ethnographic ways of doing through experimental collaborations animated transdisciplinary research and creative ways of disseminating knowledge.
In addition to securing funding and managing research projects at institutions such as Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, he has coordinated MA programmes at the University of Leicester and the Estonian Academy of Arts. He has lectured at such prestigious institutions, as Cornell University, Humboldt University, King's College London, Oxford University, the Spanish National Research Council, the University of Lisbon, and UCL.
As his publications have shown:
- Repair practices challenge the economic reasoning of accelerated cycles of production- consumption-disposal through an alternative ecology of care; Indeed, we do not repair things because they break, but because we look after them;
- The investigation of what does not disappear properly makes visible broken relationships and where the mark between the old and the new lays;
- The gap between anthropology as a practice and as a discipline is overgrowing, therefore there is a need to innovate ethnographically with experimental collaborations;
- Our future is being contested and constructed through the materiality of politics. Contemporary crises have become a continuous negotiation with unstable systems to cope with a multiplicity of quick uncertainties.