Principal Investigators

Prof Dr Katharina Inhetveen
Deputy Speaker &
Principal Investigator (TP1)
Prof Dr Katharina Inhetveen
Deputy Speaker
Principal Investigator (TP1)
Professor of Sociology
Katharina Inhetveen is heading the subproject “Mobility and Institutions of Intermediary Rule in Southern Africa” together with Mario Krämer. Since 2014, she holds the chair for General Sociology at the University of Siegen, Germany. Before that, she was professor for political sociology of the non-OECD world at the UniBw Munich and professor for sociology with a focus on qualitative empirical methods at the LMU Munich. Her postdoc research focused on the political order of refugee camps located in southern Africa; in her doctoral dissertation, she researched institutional innovation in the case of gender quotas in German and Norwegian political parties. Other longstanding fields of interest are the sociology of violence and music sociology.
Katharina Inhetveen is the deputy speaker of the research unit. She is also the PI of two other current research projects, the DFG research project “Torture and Body Knowledge” (2018-2022) and the sub-project “African Music and Politics: Negotiations of Violence in South African Popular Music” within the DFG CRC “Transformations of the Popular”.
AR-K 503
Adolf-Reichwein-Str. 2
University of Siegen
D-57068 Siegen

PD Dr Mario Krämer
Principal Investigator (TP1)
PD Dr Mario Krämer
Principal Investigator (TP1)
Senior Lecturer (Social and Cultural Anthropology)
Mario Krämer is heading the subproject “Mobility and Institutions of Intermediary Rule in Southern Africa” together with Katharina Inhetveen. His main fields of research are political and environmental anthropology. Focusing on Southern Africa, he has conducted 30 months of fieldwork, mainly in KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and Namibia, in the past 20 years. In his postdoctoral research, Mario Krämer investigated the power and legitimacy of chieftaincy in Southern Africa in the post-apartheid era and his doctoral research focused on collective violence and social order in KwaZulu-Natal. In addition, he examines the nexus of environmentalism, traditionalism and rural-urban relations in contemporary Germany.
Since 2019, he is Privatdozent at the University of Cologne and he held Professorships in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Universities of Konstanz (2017) and Cologne (2015, 2020).
Global South Studies Center (GSSC)
University of Cologne
Classen-Kappelmann-Str. 24
D-50931 Köln
Telefon: +49 (0)221-470 76651
Email:mario.kraemer@uni-koeln.de
Homepage: https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/en/people/members/kraemer-pd-dr-mario
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6304-9205
Prof Dr Christian Lahusen
Principal Investigator (TP2)
Prof Dr Christian Lahusen
Principal Investigator (TP2)
Professor of Sociology
Christian Lahusen is professor of sociology at the Department of Social Sciences, and principal investigator in the subproject “Precarious Presence” of the research unit on “Transborder Mobility and Institutional Dynamics”. He studied sociology in Düsseldorf and Madrid, received his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence and obtained his habilitation from the University of Bamberg. His research interests include the sociology of European societies and European integration, social movements and civil societies, social problems and social exclusion, the sociology of bureaucracy and the modern state. He has directed and participated in a number of national and international research projects funded by the German Research Council, the EU and other national and international funding agencies. Publications include more than 20 books and edited collections, and more than 80 articles and book chapters, published by leading national and international publishers and journals.
AR-H 503
Adolf-Reichwein-Str. 2
University of SiegenD-57068 Siegen
Phone: +49 (0)271-740 3296 (office), +49 (0)175-700 5531 (mobil)

Prof Dr Michaela Pelican
Principal Investigator (TP3)
Prof Dr Michaela Pelican
Principal Investigator (TP3)
Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Michaela Pelican is professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Cologne and the principal investigator in the research unit’s subproject 3 “Migration, Intersectionality and Institutional Interaction: African migrants’ experiences in the United Arab Emirates”. She is also the speaker/coordinator of the international research unit “The production and reproduction of social inequalities: Global contexts and concepts of labour exploitation” and board member of the Global South Studies Center Cologne (GSSC). Michaela holds a Ph.D. in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Halle/Saale. Before coming to Cologne, she was a lecturer at the University of Zurich, guest professor at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies in Kyoto, and a researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale. Michaela’s main areas of research and teaching are migration within the Global South, social inequality, ethnicity, indigeneity, conflict, research methodology, and audio-visual anthropology. Her regional specialization is in Central Africa, in particular Cameroon. She has also conducted research in the United Arab Emirates and southern China, as she is interested in the strengthening relations and transnational mobilities between Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Main Building, Room 6.003
Albertus-Magnus-Platz
University of Cologne
D-50923 Köln
Tel: +49 (0)221-470 3515
Email: mpelican@uni-koeln.de
Homepage: https://www.michaela-pelican.com

Prof Dr Karin Schittenhelm
Speaker &
Principal Investigator (TP4)
Prof Dr Karin Schittenhelm
Speaker
Principal Investigator (TP4)
Professor of Sociology
Karin Schittenhelm is professor of sociology at the University of Siegen, speaker of the Research Unit during the first funding period and principal investigator of subproject 4 on ‘Asylum Regimes and Transnational Refugee Families in Germany and France’. She obtained her PhD from the Free University of Berlin based on a thesis which explored public art and the remembrance of Germany’s Nazi past. In her postdoctoral research, she explored the school-to-work transition of young women with a particular focus on gender, class, and migration and completed her habilitation at Humboldt University Berlin. Her research interests include migration and asylum research, gender, education, and life course research. Karin Schittenhelm was one of the leaders of an international research group on the topic of ‘Cultural Capital During Migration’ (with a focus on Canada and European immigration societies) and a member of the DFG Research Unit ‘Horizontal Europeanization’. She previously held the Chaire Alfred Grosser, Sciences Po, France and was a visiting scholar, among others, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen.
AR-K 505
Adolf-Reichwein-Str. 2
University of Siegen
D-57068 Siegen
Phone: +49 (0)271-740 3425 (Secretary)

Prof Dr Andrea Schneiker
Principal Investigator (TP5)
Prof Dr Andrea Schneiker
Principal Investigator (TP5)
Professor of Global Governance
Andrea Schneiker (she/her) is heading the subproject “International Organisations: Norm Setting and Norm Implementation for the Protection of Forced Migrants” (TP5). She is full professor of Global Governance at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Münster, after which she worked as an assistant professor at the Leibniz University of Hannover and the University of Bremen and as junior professor of Political Science at the University of Siegen. She was also visiting scholar at New York University, Radboud University Nijmegen, and the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Her research focuses on the role of international governmental organizations and non-state actors in the fields of international security, humanitarian assistance, human rights, and migration.