2021
ERC Advanced Grand (Project: REWILDING)

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)

2010-2012       
Executive Director of the Society of Africa-related Sciences in German (Vereinigung der Afrikawissenschaften Deutschlands)

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)

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

• Human-environment interaction
• Political Ecology
• Transition of local knowledge
• Conflict
• Southern Africa
• Eastern Africa

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.

Further Information

together with Thiemo Breyer

Duration: 2024-2027

Funding: DFG

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)

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.

Funding: DAAD

Website: www.afas.africa

Duration: 2021-2025

Objectives:

• Development and establishment of an interdisciplinary research and teaching cooperation format
• Intensification of partnership-based cooperation on an institutional level
• Inclusion of further partners from science and industry

Cooperation Partners: Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore

Funding: DAAD

Website: geographie.uni-koeln.de

Duration: 2020-2024

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.

Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig

Staff: Lacan, Léa M.A., Dr. Hauke Vehrs

Website: crc228.de/projects/project_a04/

Duration: 1st Funding Phase: 2018-2022 (4 years)

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

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

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.

Support: German Research Foundation (DFG)

Project management: Prof. Dr. Thomas Widlok, Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig

Departments: Institute for African Studies and Egyptology; Department of Cultural and Social  Anthropology; Competence Area IV

Website: http://www.sfb806.uni-koeln.de/index.php/projects/s-supraregional-systems/e3

Duration: 3rd Funding Phase 2017-2021

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

Project management: Prof. Dr. Michael Bollig

Staff: Dr. Diego Menestrey Schwieger, Thekla Kelbert, M.A., Elsemi Olwage, M.A.

Website: www.lings-net.de

Duration:
3rd funding phase 2016-2019
2nd funding phase 2014-2016
1st funding phase 2010-2013

Description: 

REAL is a Marie Curie Actions Innovative Training Network (ITN) funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. The project involves seven full participant research centers in Europe and nine international associate partners and has been running since 2013.

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

Link: real-project.eu

Period: 2013-01 to 2017-12

Executive Summaries of All ESR and ER Real Research Projects 2013-17

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

Link: gepris.dfg.de

Period: 2010-01 to 2016-12

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

Link: www.spp1448.de

Period: 2010-01 to 2015-12

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

Link: portal.volkswagenstiftung.de

Period: 2008-01 to 2014-12