Since 2025
Coordinator of the DAAD project “Dialogue on Migration Governance in the Euro-Mediterranean Region” (DiaMiGo) between the University of Cologne and the American University of Cairo

2020 – 2025
Assistant Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne: Teaching and program coordination M.A. Culture and Environment in Africa (CEA)

2017 – 2022
PhD project, affiliation: University of Cologne and Kenyatta University, Nairobi (Kenya) 

2017 – 2020
Research Fellow of the project „EUmanities“, a.r.t.e.s. graduate school 

2009 – 2016
Studies at Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz; University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein; University of Cologne; Gulu University (Uganda) 

• Border regimes, migration and mobility management
• Bureaucracy and state institutions
• Security and policing
• (Neo)colonialism and rassism
• Gender studies and empowerment
• Regional focus: East Africa, Horn of Africa, Germany  

Even though the world today appears increasingly interconnected, borders are still being used to restrict the freedom of movement worldwide, and reinforce social inequalities. As the "or" in the title suggests, the project addresses the question of "or": because people are affected by borders in very different ways. The project provides information about border developments and brings stories, voices, and regions to the fore that rarely make it into the focus of “Western“ media.

B/OR/DER ST/OR/IES is an exhibition-intervention that took place from May 25 to August 25, 2023, in the permanent exhibition of the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne. Five stations provided information on various aspects such as colonialism, the „closed-door“ policy of Europe, discrimination – but also on border critique and resistance. The project was developed by two doctoral students from the University of Cologne in cooperation with the organization Pamoja Afrika e.V. Cologne, Bündnis14 Afrika, and the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. Students from the Cologne International School of Design (KISD) contributed to the design, and students from the University of Cologne developed the associated Instagram channel. B/OR/DER ST/OR/IES was funded by the Global South Studies Center and the City of Cologne.

More information: https://borderstories.de/en/ 

The project "Enforcing the Line: An Ethnography of the Kenyan Border Regime" analyzes historical and current developments of the border regime in East Africa. Based on 18 months of ethnographic research between 2017 and 2019, it describes the daily lives of Kenyan border officials as they deal with the legacy of colonial borders on the ground, and analyzes actual enforcement practices in complex local borderland environments. In addition to a broad network of state institutions, it is shown that community policing initiatives and civilian actors from border regions are also actively involved in border control practices.

Furthermore, the project examines the implementation process of One Stop Border Posts (OSBPs), which are currently taking place across the African continent. OSBPs are located along central trade corridors and stand in between regional, pan-African, and neo-colonial, capitalist interests. These new, digitalized border infrastructures will shape cross-border trade, migration, security, and transnational relations in the future. Based on multisited ethnography, the project offers a critical and comparative analysis of this implementation process based on local voices. Case studies from the border regions of Kenya with Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Uganda illustrate the ambivalent reality of borders worldwide, which simultaneously open and close, whereby reproducing inequalities.

More information: https://artes.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/forschung/dissertationsprojekte-im-integrated-track/profilseiten-it/1504