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”.

Dr Nele Kortendiek

Principal Investigator (TP6)

Research Associate Institute of Political Science

Dr Nele Kortendiek directs the sub-project “International Organisations: Norm-Setting and Nomr Implementation for the Protection of Refugees”. She is a research associate at Goethe University Frankfurt. After completing her PhD at TU Darmstadt, she was initially a postdoctoral researcher at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen before coming to Frankfurt. For her PhD project, she conducted field research at the European external border in Greece as well as in Brussels, Geneva, Valletta and Warsaw. She has been a visiting researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS) at Oxford University and the Global Governance Unit at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB). Her research focuses on contestation and change in global governance. Her key interests include policy-making in international organisations, the influence of non-state actors on global politics, the implementation of international rules on the ground, European and international migration and asylum politics, and normative questions of borders and democracy beyond the state.

PEG-Gebäude, Raum: 3.G 135

Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6

Goethe University

D-60323 Frankfurt am Main

Phone: +49 (0)69-798 36617

Email: kortendiek@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Homepage: https://www.goethe-university-frankfurt.de/126812748/Dr__Nele_Kortendiek?locale=en

Prof Dr Mario Krämer

Principal Investigator (TP1)
Associate Professor (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 2024, he is Associate Professor at the University of Cologne.

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

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

D-57068 Siegen

Phone: +49 (0)271-740 3296 (office), +49 (0)175-700 5531 (mobil)

Email: lahusen@soziologie.uni-siegen.de

Homepage: https://www.uni-siegen.de/phil/sozialwissenschaften/soziologie/mitarbeiter/lahusen/index.html.en?lang=en

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 the Representative of the Rector for International Affairs and the Speaker of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC). She is also the speaker/coordinator of the research unit “The production and reproduction of social inequalities: Global contexts and concepts of labour exploitation”, funded by the Volkswagen Research Foundations, as well as the director of the international research cluster “Conflict-induced Displacement” at the Cologne International Forum. 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 (TP5)

Professor a.D. of Sociology, senior researcher

Karin Schittenhelm is senior researcher at the University of Siegen, speaker of the Research Unit during the first funding period and principal investigator of subproject 5 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)

Email: karin.schittenhelm@uni-siegen.de

Homepage: https://www.uni-siegen.de/phil/sozialwissenschaften/soziologie/mitarbeiter/schittenhelm/index.html.en?lang=en