2024 - present
Speaker of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC), University of Cologne
2024 - present
The Rector’s Representative for International Affairs, University of Cologne
2023 - present
Director of the international research cluster “Conflict-Induced Displacement and Socio-Economic Resilience: Learning From Neglected Conflicts in Cameroon and Myanmar“, University of Cologne
2020 - present
Speaker and coordinator of the international research unit "The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities: Global Contexts and Concepts of Labor Exploitation", University of Cologne
2018/19
Morphomata Fellow, Morphomata International Center for Advanced Studies, University of Cologne (6 months), https://www.morphomata.uni-koeln.de/fellows/alle-fellows/michaela-pelican/
2018 - present
Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne
2013- 2016
Director of the University of Cologne Forum "Ethnicity as a Political Resource: Perspectives from Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Europe"
2012 - 2018
Junior Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Cologne
2011
ASAFAS Fellow, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, University of Kyoto
2008 - 2010
Post-doctoral research project on “transnational relations of Cameroonian Muslim migrants”, research grant of the University of Zurich
2006 - 2012
Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich
2006
PhD (with distinction) in Social Anthropology, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Thesis title: “Getting along in the Grassfields: interethnic relations and identity politics in northwest Cameroon”
2003
Marie Curie Fellow, Department of Anthropology, University of Kent
2000 - 2006
PhD candidate and Junior Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale