Research

Performative Roles and Dependencies in an African Society

My research project on gender constructions through individual and collective roles in an interior Yoruba region of West Africa during the nineteenth century, explores different forms of asymmetrical dependencies (in the household). The project considers the political and socioeconomic imperatives of the century by investigating: how performed roles (e.g., as wife or as husband) and social status (e.g., as servant) intersected gender and shaped personhood; what aspects of (gendered) institutions and practices were retained or maintained to manage daily and seasonal activities; and how the contingencies of the period regulated the (re-)constructions of institutions and practices. From a multidisciplinary approach, the project critically analyzes contexts, discourses and representations of human relations. Written texts (e.g., travellers' narratives, colonial documents, local histories), oral traditions (e.g., myths, ìtàn, talking drums, praise poems) and visual (e.g., carved/sculptured objects, symbolic, mnemonic objects, masks, photographs) serve as source materials.

Period: 18th–20th centuries
Region: Africa
Specialization: Gender, Intersectionality, Critical & Discourse Theory, Epistemology, Cultural History, African/Cultural Studies

Education

• 2019–2022                 Ph.D. in History, University of Bonn, Germany
• 2015–2017                 M.A. in African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
• 2011–2013                 B.A. in English, History and Religion, University of Hannover, Germany

Academic Positions

• 2019–present             Research Associate in Research Group Dependency, Gender and Labor in the Household,
                                        University of Bonn, Germany