ANTHROPOLOGY is the study of human beings in diverse societies the world over. It sits on two major methods that give the discipline exceptional depth of understanding. The first method is fieldwork; the second is archival research. Fieldwork is a set of activities that require researchers to observe, participate, and ask formal and informal questions of the people among whom researchers live. Archival research scours the times by studying letters, reports, diaries, photos and various unpublished documents. Both methods in different ways and often complementarily bring to life the cultures, worldviews, and history of a people past and present.

TODAY anthropology is challenged by different and urgent problems. People that once led idyllic lives may now be terrorists, rebels, or divided by religious-political and ethnic conflicts. A new world of research and study is emerging, but in a less stable and more complex world.

Karla Poewe is a social anthropologist who has conducted both fieldwork and archival research in Zambia, Namibia, South Africa and since the nineteen nineties in Germany. She is interested in the problem of surviving extreme conditions, especially ones caused by the complex dynamics of war, defeat, and post-war chaos. Her most recent research established that National Socialism is a direct consequence of the defeat of WWI and its bad peace. Currently she is researching the integration of German refugees from the East into the occupied zones and the two Germanies after World War II. The August 1944 bombing of Königsberg turned her family into refugees. She experienced a few years of life in the Russian and the British Zones before arriving in Canada 1955.