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Office hour during winter semester 2022/23: by agreement, per Zoom

Fields of interest

I am a social anthropologist primarily interested in religion, youth, migration and sociality in urban Africa. I carried out fieldwork in East Africa and the Indian Ocean, particularly inKenya, Ethiopia and Madagascar. In my current manuscript “A tapestry of tensions. Envy, youth and suspicious sociality in urban Madagascar” I scrutinize envy discourses among young educated people in the Indian Oceanport city of Mahajanga. This study focuses on social tensions in regard to economic hardships and political crises in Madagascar. My analysis centers on individual migration projects and how the search for a better life changes the ways how young men and women navigate social proximity and distance in their everyday relationships.

My former research investigated religious debates among Muslims in the setting of East Africa. My main work has been on the role of saint veneration in Islam, practices of place-making and the culturalization of practices and discourses attached to shrines in Ethiopia. In addition, I took a close look at ethnic and religious boundary-making in the predominantly Christian country and explored the appropriation of global Islamic discourses into local frameworks of meaning and relevance.

During my career I worked, taught or held scholarships at the University of Mainz, Free University of Berlin, Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Societies and Cultures, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient,TOPOI Berlin, University of Cologne, University of Mahajanga and University of Göttingen.