I am a social anthropologist trained at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and currently Assistant Professor of Political Anthropology at the Institute of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. My working languages are English, Swahili and German.
My research is located at the intersection of questions concerning violence, gender, and justice in Eastern African (Zanzibar, Tanzania, Kenya) and the Arabian Peninsula (Oman). I engage theory from across the fields of political, legal, feminist, public, and linguistic anthropology, visual and arts-based ethnography, and Indian Ocean Studies.
In my current research I explore local formations of feminist praxis and gender-based colonial violence in Tanzania. Here I work with the German colonial records in the Tanzania National Archive in Dar es Salaam to explore the interplay of sexual violence, witnessing, and social justice in the context of the (post)colonial relationship between Tanzania and Germany.
During my PhD research on constructions of childhood and protection in contexts of international development in Zanzibar, I conducted 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Zanzibar/Tanzania. Based on this research I published my first book “Disputing Discipline: Child Protection, Punishment, and Piety in Zanzibar Schools” with Rutgers University Press in 2021.
During my Postdoc phase at the Research Center Normative Orders at Goethe University Frankfurt and ZMO Berlin, I expanded my research focus to include questions of belonging, gender, and language in Swahili-speaking diasporic communities in Oman and the wider Indian Ocean space.
At JGU Mainz I teach, among other things, Political Anthropology, African Feminisms, Anthropology and Development, Decolonizing Anthropology, Writing Ethnography, Ethnography of East Africa, and Contemporary Theory in Anthropology.
Academic Training
2017 | PhD, Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS, London
2013 | MARes/MPhil, Social Anthropology/Anthropological Research Methods, SOAS, London
2012 | Magistra Artium, Education/African Linguistics (Swahili)/Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University, Frankfurt
Academic Appointments
2021 - | Assistant Professor of Political Anthropology, JGU Mainz
2020 | Visiting Research Fellow, Oman Research Grant, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin
2021-2017 | Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Research Center Normative Orders, Goethe University Frankfurt