2021-2022
Visiting Fellow Max-Planck-Institute for Soical Anthropology, Halle/S.

Since 2021
Member of the Northrhine-Westfalian Academy of Science and Art

2016-2017
Fellow at the Morphomata Internat. Kolleg, University of Cologne

Since 2013
Professor for African Studies, University of Cologne (Focus Cultural Anthropology)

2008-2013
Professor for Anthropology, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, Director, Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies, University Nijmegen

2009-2013
Research Associate, SFB/CRC 806, Univ. of Cologne

2012
Resident Research Fellow, Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung, Bielefeld

2011
Visiting Professor for Anthropology, University of Zürich

2006-2008
Lecturer, Dept. of Anthropology, Durham University

2006
Visiting Professor for Anthropology, University of Heidelberg

2004
Postdoctoral Lecture Qualification (Habilitation), Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne

2003-2006
Senior Researcher, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen (funded by the Volkswagen Foundation)

2000-2002
Senior Researcher, MPI for Anthropological Research, Halle

1998
Visiting Professor, Centre for African and Asian Area Studies, Kyoto University

1995-2000
Senior Researcher, University of Cologne (funded by the German Research Council DFG)

1994-1995
Lecturer, London School of Economics and Political Science

1994
Ph. D. in Anthropology, LSE, University of London

1992-1994
Junior Researcher, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

1989
M.Sc. (distinction) in Anthropology at the LSE, University of London

• Key Questions of Social Order
• Economic Anthropology
• Anthropology of Rituals
• Theory of Practice and Ethics
• Cultural Diversity and Universality Concerning Space, Time, and Causality
• Cross-Cultural Hunter-Gatherer Research

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: 

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

Description:
When cooperating in changing land use, agents employ at times conflicting temporal frames of reference (TFR). TFR employed in future-making are largely implicit and have to be made explicit through research. Local expectations and aspirations rely on TFR that originate in Africa but also on those imported and created in processes of linkage across scales.

Support:
DFG

Duration:
2018 - 2021