Angelie Marilla
Master’s in Cultural Sociology, graduated in 2017
Originally from the Philippines, currently preparing her PhD defense in Social Anthropology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium, and applying for a postdoctoral position.
Interview conducted by Michaela Nespěchalová, January 2026.
- How has studying Cultural Sociology at FSS influenced your career path or further studies?
The Cultural Sociology program had a significant influence on my decision to pursue a career in academia. After graduating in 2017, I returned to the Philippines to teach sociology courses, supported by a recommendation from Nadya Jaworski, one of my professors at FSS, which helped me secure the position. In my teaching, I drew on a range of texts as well as methodological and pedagogical skills acquired at FSS, sharing these with colleagues and students in my home institution. My training at FSS also informed my decision to pursue doctoral studies in Europe.
Our engagement with classic theorists such as Durkheim, Simmel, and Geertz, along with other influential social scientists, helped me decide to pursue a PhD in Social Anthropology. I came to understand Cultural Sociology as a field concerned with Durkheimian sacred and profane – the analysis of binary meaning structures in social life – a perspective that proved formative in my training. For my master’s thesis in Cultural Sociology, I examined the circulation of meaning structures through photographs and visual imageries, a theme I continued to develop in my PhD research by focusing on materialities in circulation, particularly migratory everyday objects.
2. Which skills or perspectives from the program do you use most in your current work?
Critical thinking, engaging with texts, and developing rigor in research were among the key skills I acquired through the many courses I took at FSS. These skills are, of course, crucial in academia, and I feel that the program provided a strong training ground where I learned how to read meaningfully and how to interpret ethnographic data.
3. What was the most valuable or memorable part of the program for you?
Aside from its multicultural and superdiverse environment, the strength of the Cultural Sociology program is its professors. The program is structured around lectures and seminars that were both dense and intellectually stimulating. I especially enjoyed the writing seminar with Nadya Jaworski, where we learned not only how to write strong seminar papers but also how to prepare our work for publication. Werner Binder’s seminar on interpretation was equally memorable. We brought texts and images to class and analyzed them together, where we learned how to uncover deep structures through surface meanings. The theoretical lectures of Csaba Szaló were also excellent; I still remember his presentations, which I have often tried to emulate because of their clarity and the way he skillfully simplified complex texts. And who could forget Radim Marada’s seminar classes, where we learned how to read theory closely and apply it to our own research interests (from football to mass protests and many topics in between).
4. How has the Cultural Sociology program shaped the way you understand society, culture, or everyday social issues today?
Cultural sociology is about understanding social life, including the ordinary and everyday life, the almost forgotten aspects of our routines that we often take for granted but which shape us in profound ways. Our daily judgments rely on norms formed by deep cultural structures into which we are socialized. Cultural sociology equips us with tools to recognize this normativity: from the moment we wake up, to the choices we make, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and extending to broader issues such as immigration or racism. The program trains us to see these phenomena differently, giving us an extra pair of critical eyes to identify the social dynamics, orders, and binaries embedded in our seemingly ordinary lives.
5. What advice would you give to prospective students considering Cultural Sociology at FSS?
I would advise future students to dive into this vibrant social laboratory that is the FSS – and the communities we belong to or study – as a way of fully engaging with the spirit of Cultural Sociology. This program is more than reading texts, submitting papers, and studying for exams. It is an introspective discipline that encourages us to reflect on our own lives and understand how we situate ourselves within the social world. Whether you ultimately pursue a career in academia or not, Cultural Sociology will broaden your perspective on society and expand the range of career paths you can imagine as a social scientist.