Prof. Dr. Dorothea Schulz

Geschäftsführende Direktorin

Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Studtstraße 21
D-48149 Münster
Tel.: +49 251 83-27312

doschulz[at]uni-muenster.de

Fields of interest

My research, publications, and teaching are centered on the Anthropology of Religion, of Mental Health and Spiritual Wellbeing, Political Anthropology, Islam in Africa, Gender Studies and Media Studies. I also bring to my research and teaching a strong background in critical theory, social theory, and the anthropology of social organization. I have extensive field research experience in West and East Africa, particularly in southern Mali and southwestern Uganda.
In my new book “Political Legitimacy in Postcolonial Mali” (https://www.amazon.com/Political-Legitimacy-Postcolonial-Western-Africa/dp/184701268X), I capitalize on my long-standing acquaintance with Malian politics and social history to make sense of the political crisis that has shaken the country for more than a decade. My analysis centers on the attitudes, judgments and practices by which inhabitants of a rural area in southwestern Mali attribute (or disclaim) the legitimacy of the state and of individual powerholders. I also draw on my earlier work on praise-singers – often referred to as "griots"– whose mass-mediated performances aimed to bestow praise and legitimacy on Mali’s changing political regimes, At the heart of this analytic endeavor is an effort to interrogate different dimensions, meanings and limits of political legitimacy in Mali.

Since 2014, I have embarked on a research project that addresses questions pertaining to the broader thematic fields of religious pluralism and of spiritual and emotional well-being. Drawing on empirical research on Muslim minorities in two different regions of Uganda, I address the interplay between mental health, mourning, emotional coping, and future-making in a society haunted by traumatic experiences related to civil war. My analysis reaches beyond common approaches to „trauma“ through a sustained attention to the discursive and auditory practices and symbolic-aesthetic forms through which Muslims and Christians seek to achieve greater public prominence and to partake in debates over the ordering of moral and social life. By situating these dynamics in the broader context of Ugandan state politics, I explore points of articulations and tensions between local-level and national politics of religious difference, and between conflicting understandings of how past “trauma“ can be healed.