Since 2018
Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

2015/16
Visiting Professor, Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research, University of Bremen  

2013 - 2018
Junior-Professor, a.r.t.e.s. Graduate-school, University of Cologne

2012 - 2013
Senior Lecturer, Institute for Media Studies, University of Siegen

2007 - 2012
Postdoctoral Researcher SFB „Media Upheavals“ and DFG-funded Research Project "Trance Mediums and New Media", University of Siegen

2009
Ph.D. (Dr. phil. with distinction), Anthropology, Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen

2003 - 2007
Ph.D. candidate, interdisciplinary Graduate Research Training Group "The Figure of the Third", University of Constance

2003
Magister Artium Anthropology, Philosophy, Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen

• Anthropology of Religion
• Media Anthropology
• Anthropology of Migration and Transnationalism
• Religious Movements
• North Africa, Middle East
• Trans-Saharan and Trans-Mediterranean Migration

2010 - present
Member of the editorial board Siegen/West, Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaft (ZfK)

2010 - present
Founding member and elected spokesperson of the Mediterranean Study Section, German Anthropological Association

2008 - present
Elected board-member of the Media Anthropology Study Section, German Anthropological Association

The sub-project focuses on media practices in Morocco and the Moroccan diaspora and analyzes the emergence of current public spheres and forms of cooperation in the transformation processes in North Africa. In the first phase of the project, the establishing and researching a MediaSpace/Computer Club was used to investigate how transnationally far-reaching forms of cooperation in economic, tourism and development-related contexts produce hierarchized public spheres in the High Atlas. In the second phase, an intra-Moroccan and intercontinental comparison was used to examine how media practices form fragmented public spheres under conditions of political repression and transnational mobility. In addition to a computer club in Dortmund, which was brought into the project as (research-) infrastructure, a media space was set up in Al-Hoceima as a center of political protests in the Rif. In the third phase, media environments are now focused on increasingly monitored public spheres of (post-) colonial social formations. For this purpose, state and non-state media practices of monitoring, tracing and surveillance in Morocco and the Moroccan diaspora are to be examined and a Euro-Mediterranean overall picture of hierarchized, fragmented and monitored public spheres is to be developed.

Funding: DFG

Website: www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de

Duration: 2024-2027

Das transdisziplinäre Graduiertenkolleg untersucht Praktiken des Anschließens und Ausschließens. In globalisierten Netzwerken gilt Anschlussfähigkeit als wesentliche Voraussetzung von Teilhabe. Das Kolleg interessiert sich für die ‚andere Seite‘ von Anschlussprogrammen in den Netzwerken von Medien, Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik, Recht, Wissenschaft, Kunst und Kultur und fragt nach den Ausschlüssen, die mit den in globalisierten Netzwerken gängigen Praktiken des Anschließens einhergehen. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen stehen Praktiken lokaler Partikularisierung, die sich über das Ideal einer globalen Standardisierung und Vernetzung hinaus nachweisen lassen und somit jenseits landläufiger national-kultureller Grenzmarkierungen und a priori definierter historischer Perioden entstehen, welche für unterschiedliche Konzepte der Moderne maßgeblich sind.

Dazu bringt das GRK die Disziplinen der Kunst-, Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften zusammen mit der Philologie, Ethnologie, den kulturvergleichenden Fächern und der künstlerischen und gestalterischen Praxis. Es versammelt Expertisen für europäische, ost- und südostasiatische, nord- und südamerikanische sowie subsaharisch afrikanische und arabische Beobachtungsräume der letzten zwei Jahrhunderte. Mit der Analyse divergierender Kulturkonzepte und begrifflicher Konstruktionen hinsichtlich der lokalen Praktiken des (sich) Anschließens und des (sich) Ausschließens wird eine neue transdisziplinäre Methodik zur Betrachtung des Wechselverhältnisses von Beteiligung und Dissidenz erprobt. Diese ist auf ein prozessuales Handeln und auf Dialogizität ausgelegt. Im Vergleich von historischen Wandlungsprozessen und unterschiedlichen globalen, regionalen und lokalen Räumen führt das zu Fragen der Macht, der Teilhabe, der Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung sowie der fragmentarischen Wahrnehmung und symbolischen Narrativierung von Welt.

Support: DFG

Cooperation Partners: Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Technischen Hochschule Köln

Project management: Prof. Dr. Sandra Kurfürst, Prof. Dr. Martin Zillinger, et. al.

Website: www.anschliessenausschliessen.de

Duration: October 2021 to March 2026.

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

Website: crc-trr228.de

Duration: 2nd Funding Phase: 2022-2025 (4 years)

Description: 

The project focuses on media practices in Marocco and analyzes the emergence of a civil society and the constitution of new public spheres during ongoing processes of social transformation in North Africa. The rapid spread of digital media in the Arab world led to new demands for political participation and has challenged hegemonic power structures since. In this context, socio-informatic research and design zoom in on media infrastructures while media-ethnological research investigates how new media practices (re-)establish issues of concern shaping and re-shaping different public realms. The integrated research perspective analyzes the relationship between civil society, co-operatively constituted publics and their media infrastructures in situ.

Support:
DFG

Duration:
2016 - 2023

Description:
Migration is a key strategy of future-making during land-use change. Ethnographic research is needed to explore how actors engage with changing ecologies of practice and relate to rapidly shifting landscapes of intensification, conservation and decay. This will contribute to a better understanding of both, how actors refine their capacities to aspire and redefine scale on site and in situ.

Support:
DFG

Duration:
2018 - 2021