2017 Winner of the Leo Spitzer Award 2018 at the University of Cologne
2016-present Co-PI in the collaborative research centre Africa’s Rural Futures (TR288)
2011-2010 Co-PI of the Marie Curie ITN Resilience in East African Landscapes
2010-present Co-Director of the DFG long-term project Institutions and Globalization
2010-2016 Speaker of the Research Unit Resilience, Collapse and Reorganisation in the Savannahs of Eastern and Southern Africa (FOR 1501)
2009-present Director of the Cologne African Studies Center (CASC)
2004-2010 Referee (Fachkollegiat) for Anthropology with the German Research Foundation
2003-present Editorial board-member of Human Ecology, Peripherie, Nomadic Peoples
2000-2007 Speaker of the Collaborative Research Programme ACACIA (Arid Climate Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa; SFB 389)
Short Biography
2015 Associate Vice-Rector for the Global South
2011 Prorector for international relations, University of Cologne
2009 Offered Full Professorship (W3), Institute of Anthropology, University Hamburg (declined)
2001 Offered Full Professorship (C4), Institute of Anthropology, University of Halle (declined)
2000 Replacement Professorship (C4), Institute of Anthropology, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich
2000-present Professor for Anthropology at the University of Cologne and Speaker for the Interdisciplinary Programme Arid Climate and Cultural Evolution in Arid Africa (ACACIA); the programme includes several doctoral studies on resource management in southern Africa’s communal areas
1999 Postdoctoral Lecture Qualification (Habilitation), Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne
1992-1999 Associate Professor (C3), Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne
1991 PhD (Dr. Phil.), University of Tübingen
1986-1991 PhD Student, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Tübingen. Fieldwork in Kenya on conflict management
Research Interests
Human-environment interaction
Political Ecology
Transition of local knowledge
Conflict
Southern Africa
Eastern Africa
Current Research Projects
ERC: Rewilding the Anthropocene
Rewilding the Anthropocene is a research project in environmental anthropology contributing to the budding field of environmental humanities and to debates on the shifting entanglements between people, flora, and fauna in the world’s largest conservation landscape, the southern African Kavango-Zambezi Transboundary Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA).
The project is a unique attempt to grasp changing socio-ecological relations among humans and other species through six field studies within KAZA TFCA. These studies follow a comparative approach to examine how human livelihoods, institutions, social imaginaries, and attitudes change under – and give rise to – new socio-ecological conditions. They also include an in-depth focus on six particular multi-species assemblages. Each assemblage is comprised of a loose multi-scalar network consisting of different species populations, environmental infrastructures and technologies, and human actors and organizations.
Beyond its empirical focus on southern Africa the project actively engages in debates and research on rewilding and conservation across the globe. Workshops, conferences, and publications aim to contribute to an understanding of rewilding as a key strategy of environmental governance in the Anthropocene.
The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) is a research conglomerate funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It aims at understanding African futures and how they are “made” in rural areas by investigating land-use change and social-ecological transformation. The Universities of Bonn and Cologne (UoC) have a track record of collaborations in this regional and thematic field of interest, combining complementary expertise from a wide range of disciplines in natural and social sciences. “Future-making” refers to physical changes as well as social practices that shape future conditions by making the future an issue in the present.
The first funding phase of the CRC focused on the two seemingly opposite, yet often mutually constitutive processes of agricultural intensification and conservation. This focus is widened in the current phase to include infrastructuring as a third essential process. With infrastructuring we refer to the establishment of large-scale infrastructure, which we consider as an additional driver of land-use change and social-ecological transformation. All three processes – intensification, conservation, and infrastructuring – contribute, in often overlapping dynamics, to grand-scale transformations in our research areas with multiple micro-scalar repercussions. The CRC conceptualizes such processes of social-ecological transformation as expressions of “future-making”. This builds on the hypothesis that imagined futures and the different ideas about how they can be realized have a decisive impact on current land-use dynamics. The projects of the CRC analyse how different approaches to the future, and also surprises and unintended side-effects, inform the politics and practices of large-scale land-use change, and how they relate to each other.
Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Cooperation Partners: University of Bonn, Dep. of Geography
African Climate and Environment Center - Future African Savannas (AFAS)
The African Climate and Environment Center – Future African Savannas (AFAS) commenced in 2021 is one of the DAAD Global Centres for Climate and Environment. AFAS is a consortium between two African and two German universities and strives for interdisciplinary and international exchange beyond academia by working on the science-policy-practice interface for climate change adaptation and protection of the environment. The thematic focus of the center are nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and biodiversity loss in African savannas.
CRC Future Rural Africa A04 “Future Conservation. Towards an African Eden? Shifting bio-cultural frontiers and the (re)coupling of social-ecological relations in the conservation areas”
Description: Social-ecological transformation in southern and eastern Africa is increasingly shaped by different forms of conservation: national parks, transboundary conservation areas, community-based conservation, and conservation on freehold farmland. This project focuses on the coupling of social, cultural and material dynamics in social-ecological systems under various regimes of conservation from the perspective of political ecology, neo-materialist as well as multi-species approaches.
CRC Future Rural Africa Z03 Combinded Farm/Houshold Survey
Description: Across CRC study areas projects work on overarching research questions: Will conservation lead to well-being and a reduction of poverty? Will agricultural intesification create wealth? How are educational status/gender/age of individuals related to houshold decisions and related outcomes? How is migration linked to future making processes? Answering these questions requires a systematic approach to longitudinal farm-household data collection.
Support: DFG
Duration: 2018 - 2021
CRC Future Rural Africa Z04 Integrated Research and Training Group (IRTG)
Description: The proposed IRTG will built on existing PhD programmes at both universities (Cologne and Bonn), but complements them with a training program that addresses the particular design and interests of the collaborative research center (CRC). The IRTG will thus enhance the exchange and coherence within the interdisciplinary yet thematically focues CRC and provide opportunities for early career research (ECR) to strengthen disciplinary skills in the context of well-established programs.
Support: DFG
Duration: 2018 - 2021
CRC 806 “Our Way to Europe” E03 “Anthropological Models for a Reconstruction of the First African Frontier”
Description:
This project explores anthropological models of hunter-gatherer social dynamics and seeks to relate these models to the theoretical idea of a frontier, which means explaining forms of social organisation as the outcome of a condition of gradual expansion, and conversely this expansion as the result of specific social dynamics.
LINGS – Local Institutions in Globalized Societies
Description:
Local Institutions in Globalized Societies is a comparative anthropological research project that aims to understand how pastoral communities in Namibia govern water usage.
Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Cooperation Partners: University of Hamburg, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Prof. Dr. M. Schnegg
The aim of REAL is to provide a longer-term historical perspective on human-environment interactions to enable future long-term sustainable use of East Africa’s fragile environment and resources. It focuses on the temporal, spatial, and social dynamics of human-landscape interactions in East Africa over the last millennium.
Region: Africa
Department: Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology
Resilience, Collapse and Reorganisation in the Social-Ecological Systems of Southern and Eastern African Savannahs
Description:
In der interdisziplinären Forschergruppe sollen an ausgewählten Standorten Kenias und Südafrikas Umbruchprozesse in sozial-ökologischen Systemen untersucht werden.
Region: Africa
Department: Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology
Adaptation and Creativity in Africa – Technologies and Significations in the Production of Order and Disorder
Description:
The DFG Priority Programme (SPP) 1448 investigates the on‐going challenges prompted by accelerated processes of globalization influencing current institutional transformations in Africa. In particular the SPP examines creative adaptations that enact specific forms of institutional (dis)order.
Region: Africa
Department: Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology
Mobility, Networks and Institutions in the Management of Natural Resources in Contemporary Africa
Description:
The first phase of the project investigated the relationship between mobility and the management of natural resources in African savannah environments as a result of processes of globalization, commoditization and rural impoverishment that lead to an increasing flow of people, ideas and capital.
Region: Africa
Department: Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology
