Anthropology Lecture Series

Social Life and Spatial Configurations of Belonging in a Fishing Town at Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania

Presentation date: April 29, 2025

Abstract: tba

‘Making things’, Skill and Entrepreneurial Labour: on the Political Economy of Baking and Goldsmiting in Accra and Lagos, 1920s-1980s

Presentation date: May 6, 2025

Abstract: tba

African Women’s Lives (and Dreams) Across Borders

Presentation date: May 13, 2025

Abstract: This presentation highlights one chapter of a book project, telling the story of African-born women who traversed West Africa from the 1950s to the 1970s. The women in focus, such as Cameroonian Esther Tanyi, amassed a distinct form of social, political, religious, and intellectual power as they navigated mid-20th-century Africa on behalf of Baha’ism—a religion founded in 19th-century Iran that emphasizes racial, cultural, and gender equity. The featured African-born women exemplified feminist action through maternal power (a form of “public motherhood”), nurturing their communities while demonstrating cultural influence and mobility in West Africa. Many of these women traveled as Baha'i pioneers—volunteers who relocated to teach the Baha'i religion and help establish communities, distinct from Christian missionaries. I focus on the theme of dreams to examine these women’s aspirations for upward social mobility and racial and cultural unity, both figuratively and literally. Using four of Esther Tanyi’s recollected nighttime dreams to frame the presentation, I explore how the lives of these women provide a historical perspective on how African women envisioned and pursued dreams of gender equity, racial harmony, and international peace—approaches that transcended their religious views and crossed both real and imagined cultural boundaries. These dreams inspired them to propose alternative messages and avenues for a more equitable world, reflecting the power of hope and aspiration in the face of adversity.

Looming crises in the Sahel: Exploring critical state-citizen relationships in Burkina Faso

Presentation date: May 20, 2025

Abstract: tba

tba

Presentation date: May 27, 2025

Abstract: tba

Navigating Success: Vigilance, Stress, and Social Mobility Among Latinas in Southern California

Presentation date: June 3, 2025

Abstract: tba

Epistemic Mis/trust and Digital Ethnography in Postmigrant Muslim Contexts

Presentation date: June 17, 2025

Abstract: 

In this talk, I examine the complex dynamics of epistemic trust and mistrust in digital ethnography in post migrant contexts. Drawing on encounters from my (post)digital ethnographic research with German-speaking Muslim women mainly in North Rhine-Westphalia, I explore how mis/trust manifests both toward researchers and their methods of knowledge production. In this highly securitised, racialised, or migrantised field, mistrust was particularly pronounced in digital spaces, often shaped by prior extractive encounters with journalists, security personnel and scholars. Mistrust, encompassing suspicion, doubt, and unease in the absence of definitive proof, can lead to distrust – a complete rejection of trust – not only toward the researcher but also toward the epistemological frameworks they employ.

Beyond prior experience of extractive research encounters, mistrust also emerges from a critical awareness of the impossibility of translation between “different epistemological systems of representation,” as Nadja Fadil argues (forthcoming 2025). Building on Fadil’s engagement with scepticism and ethnographic refusal (Fadil 2024), I view mistrust not merely as ethnographic refusal (Simpson 2007) but as a productive lens through which to explore the concept of epistemic mis/trust as a multi-epistemic encounter that encompasses digital, religious, and migrant contexts and ways of knowing. This talk thereby highlights the fluid nature of epistemic mis/trust, demonstrating how these are not fixed states but a continuous negotiation that depends on context, positionality, and the media used. I emphasise the ongoing ethical and methodological challenges of navigating the continuum of epistemic trust and mistrust in ethnographic research, including the need to reflect on the deeply personal and collaborative approach of doing ethnography.

In/formal security providers in urban security governance in Nigeria: looming threat or lingering reality?

Presentation date: July 1, 2025

Abstract: tba

Unravelling Generational Ties: Constructions of Family History in Accounts of Parent-Child Estrangement

Presentation date: July 8, 2025

Abstract: tba