Third-party Funded Research Projects

Ongoing Projects

• Knowledge for Tomorrow. Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Humanities in Sub Saharan Africa and North Africa
  The project "Knowledge for Tomorrow – Cooperative Research Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa" opens the possibility for research partnerships between German and African researches. At the same time, it promotes high-ranking humanists and social scientists on their way to a professorship and supports them in building international partnerships and academic networks. Furthermore, this project contributes to the education of young scientists and to the capacity building at African universities.

  Funding: Volkswagen Foundation (VolkswagenStiftung)
  Project Management: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, African History, History Department
  Participants: Rahel Kühne-Thies, M.A., African History, History Department and Petra Rothenhäuser, Administration, History Department

  The research projects of this funding initiative include several fields of the ‘humanities’ – archaeology, history, linguistics, literary studies, sociology, social and cultural anthropology, religious studies, migration and urban research.
  During the first term between 2013 and 2016, postdocs from Ethiopia, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Chad, Nigeria and South Africa were involved.
  The second funding round took place between 2016 and 2019. Meanwhile the third and final funding round has started (2020 to 2022).
  The funded research projects received great international attention, not only because they were highly successful, but also because they pursued highly topical issues such as the intra-African migration in Ethiopia and Djibouti, the anti-radicalisation strategies in the Islamic setting of Kenya, the archaeological exploration of early mankind in Tanzania, the issue of cultural heritage in Zimbabwe and the decline of language diversity in Uganda.
  
  Further information can be found here:
  https://www.vwfoundation-humanities.uni-hannover.de/

  © Amos Atuhairwe, Makerere, 2019

  Further Information about Knowledge for Tomorrow: Humanities

  can be found on the Project Web Page

  click here
• Summer Schools: Anthropology and Contemporary Visual Arts from the Black Atlantic: Between the Art Museum and the Ethnological Museum in the Global North
  © Christoph Singler 2019

  International Summer school: "Anthropology and Contemporary Visual Arts from the Black Atlantic: Between the Art Museum and the Ethnological Museum in the Global North"

  Funding: Volkswagen Foundation (VolkswagenStiftung), promotional volume 220.600 Euro
  Project participants:

  • Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, Afrikanische Geschichte, Historisches Seminar, Leibniz Universität Hannover
  • Prof. Dr. Christoph Singler, Literatures and Visual Arts in Latin America, Université Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Besançon / Frankreich
  • Dr. El Hadj Malick Ndiaye, Université Cheikh Anta Diop / Musée de l’Art Africain, Dakar / Senegal
  • Prof. Dr. Kerstin Pinther, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Ludwig-Maximilian Universität München
  • Dr. Romuald Tchibozo, FASH/Département d'Histoire et d'Archéologie, Université d'Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou/ Benin
  • Dr. Sterlin Ulysse, Institut d’Histoire de l’Art/Université d'État d'Haiti, Port-au-Prince / Haiti

  Planned as a series of three summer schools (Dakar, Senegal, in March 2019; Hannover, Germany, in April 2020, and Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, in June 2021 - dates postponed due to the pandemic), the project combines contemporary visual arts from Africa as well as of the American and European diaspora, which are to be seen as fragments in the broad structure of the art of the Black Atlantic. By examining the relationships between art-historical and anthropological discourses and methodology on the one hand, and museographic conventions on the other, the Summer Schools critically examine the location or locations which are attributed to the art of the Black Atlantic in ethnographic museums and art museums in the West as well as in the Black Atlantic. The central concern is to examine future possibilities for collaboration and interaction between art history and anthropology in the context of the specifics of the visual arts of the Black Atlantic, their interrelated historical development, as well as contemporary practices on both sides of the ocean.

  25 doctoral and postgraduate students from the fields of art history, cultural anthropology, cultural studies and history, whose research projects focus on Africa and its diaspores (the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe) were selected. They come from the United States, Benin, Senegal, Mozambique, South Africa, Haiti, Brazil, France, and Germany.    

• Symposium "Dealing with Violence - Resolving Conflicts in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean"
  The symposium "Dealing with Violence - Resolving Conflicts in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean" will take place from July 25 to July 27, 2022 at the conference centre Schloss Herrenhausen, Hannover.

  Funding: Volkswagen Foundation (VolkswagenStiftung)
  Applicants: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald, African History, History Department, Prof. Dr. Christine Hatzky, Latin American History, History Department, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gabbert, Cultural Anthropology and World Society, Institute of Sociology

  The use of violence as a resource of power, an instrument to contain social crises or to unfold intracultural and intercultural conflicts traversed political as well as societal systems in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, not only since the European expansion. Nevertheless, conquest and colonisation processes influenced, reinforced and perpetuated violence processes and dynamics in this world regions in a number of ways. Slavery and slave trade, civil wars, repression in authoritarian political systems, ethnic or religious exclusion, segregation and displacement, violence directed at specific groups or gender  (“femi(ni)cidios”, homophobia) or the spread of organised crime (e.g. arms trade or drug trafficking) are ways to determine this fact.

  In light of this, societies in Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean were forced to develop resilient strategies to restrict and to resolve violence and to establish measures for conflict resolution until this day. With that premise, truth and reconciliation commissions and other concepts of transitional justice proved themselves to be successful measures of social reconciliation. The same holds true for mediation processes in a religious context.

  Processes of violence and conflict management are discussed divergently in the respective disciplines. For example, anthropology, sociology and history mostly focus on continuity and transformation, ask for social, cultural, ecological and political origins and investigate the contexts of violence phenomena and dynamics and conflict management respectively. Film and media studies, literature and cultural studies on the other hand put a focus on collective memory of violence as well as on individual forms of remembrance or oblivion (“trauma narratives”). They work with literary and cinematic narratives and with works of visual and performing arts which bring to mind and explore effects and continuation of violence from an interdisciplinary perspective.

  The conference “Dealing with Violence – Resolving Conflicts in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean” will connect representatives of different disciplines and world regions in order to encourage an academic exchange, especially with and between scientists of the global south. Furthermore, the conference will open up a space for comparative perspectives, which have been rarely taken until this point.

  Further information and the registration link can be found here.