Team > Prof. Dr. Melina C. Kalfelis

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social and Cultural Anthropology

Scientific Career:

• since Mai 2023: Juniorprofessor for Social and Cultural Anthropology with a Focus on Social Belonging – University of Bayreuth
• 2022-2023: Postdoc in the research initiative „ConTrust: Trust in Conflict“ – Goethe-University Frankfurt
  
• 2021-2022: Research Associate (postdoc) of Prof. Dr. Andrea Behrends at the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology – University of Bayreuth
  
• 2020: Visiting Fellow at „Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa“ – University of Legon (5 months)
  
• 2020: Visiting Fellow at the Cluster of Excellence „Africa Multiple” –  University of Bayreuth (6 months)
  
• 2019: VolkswagenStiftung Visiting Fellow at the Institute for African Affairs – German Institute of Global and Area Studies Hamburg (7 months)
  
• 2015-2018: Collaborative Research Center 1095 “Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes”
  
• 2014-2015: Doctoral Scholarship at the „International Graduate Center for the Study of Cultures“ (GCSC) – Justus-Liebig-University Gießen
  

Education:

• 2019: PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Topic: NGO als Lebenswelt. Transnationale Verflechtungen im Arbeitsalltag von Entwicklungsakteuren" (Campus, 2020) – Justus-Liebig-University Gießen / Goethe-University Frankfurt
• 2013: Magister Artium (excellent) in Historical Anthropology, Political Science and Psychoanalysis – Goethe-University Frankfurt
  

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social and Cultural Anthropology

Melina C. Kalfelis is a Juniorprofessor of Social and Cultural Anthropology with a Focus on Social Belonging. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of social, political, and visual anthropology, and she specializes in phenomenological approaches. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in West Africa and Western Europe, she is currently building a chair that investigates human lifeworlds and ordinary practices of violence, crime, and belonging in contexts shaped by histories of global inequality. Her main interests regard questions on ethics, governance, media, gender, and dynamics of (dis)trust in conflict settings and how these transgress and link intimate, political, and transnational domains of everyday life. Her chair will further lead research into temporalities and practices of power and bureaucracy within (post-)colonial formations of development and security intervention.

Melina C. Kalfelis also has a specialized interest in filmmaking and photography.  Her latest documentary, "NGO Crossroads" (2019, 40 min.), was officially selected by the FESPACO Film Festival 2019 and the International Science Film Festival 2020.

More information on https://mkalfelis.wordpress.com/.

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social and Cultural Anthropology

Publications

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social and Cultural Anthropology

Prof. Dr. Melina C. Kalfelis
Juniorprofessor of Social and Cultural Anthropology with a Focus on Social Belonging /Melina C. Kalfelis is on parental leave until February 2025

University of Bayreuth
Building: GW II
Room: 00.17
Universitätsstraße 30
​D-95447 Bayreuth

Phone: +49 (0)921 / 55-4133

E-mail: melina.kalfelis@uni-bayreuth.de

Social and Cultural Anthropology | University of Bayreuth