Dr. Claudia Rauhut

Free University of Berlin
Institute for Latin American Studies
Phone: +49 30 838 60452
Personal website Free University of Berlin
Personal website Cluster of Excellence
rauhut[at]zedat.fu-berlin.de
 

Current Position

Research Associate at Institute for Latin American Studies, Free University of Berlin, Germany

Research

As a Social Anthropologist and Political Scientist Claudia Rauhut has been working at the Institute of Latin American Studies at Free University of Berlin for ten years. Combining micro-level empirically grounded research with postcolonial approaches on global history, she focuses on the long-term legacies of European colonialism, transatlantic slave trade and plantation slavery in the Caribbean, Latin America and the US. She is interested in how this heritage is identified today and turned into a matter of redress by different actors in the field of social movements, politics of memory and history, religion, material and immaterial heritage. In her current project she works on the topic of "Materializing slavery within Caribbean activism for reparations". It is part of her broader research on "Transregional perspectives on slavery reparations: Activism, debates, and the politics of history", focusing on Jamaica and Cuba.

1 monograph and 1 edited volume, 19 articles, various reviews, numerous national and international lectures, 22 Magister, 26 M.A. and 21 B.A. theses as first or second reviewer.

Research Project

Materializing Slavery Within Caribbean Activism for Reparations:
Transregional Perspectives from Jamaica and Cuba

It is part of my broader research on "Transregional Perspectives on Slavery Reparations: Activism, Debates and the Politics of History" which I began in 2016 as a third funded project at the Institute of Latin American Studies at Free University of Berlin. Empirically focusing on Jamaica and Cuba, I analyze how activists identify and reconstruct those legacies and turn it into a matter of contemporary redress. For this proposal in particular, I discuss their use of non-textual material sources (in addition to archival and written sources already identified) by which they evidence the crimes and injustices of slavery in order to advocate for measures of reparations. Emphazising actor's engagement in materializing slavery, my research promises to be an innovative contribution to the framework of the BCDSS research area Embodied Dependencies as it highlights the importance of a non-written archive of knowledge, traditions and objects that is mobilized to reaccess the history of slavery and dependencies.

Education

• 2011                   Ph.D., Social Anthropology, University of Leipzig, Germany
• 2000–2001         Interdisciplinary Studies at University of Havana, Cuba
• 1994–2003         Magister, Social Anthropology and Political Science, University of Leipzig, Germany
• 1994                   Interdisciplinary Studies at University of St. Denis/Paris, France

Academic Positions

• 2019–2020         IRC Junior Fellow at the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script", Free University of Berlin,
                             Germany
• 2020                   Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Reparation Research, University of the West Indies, Jamaica and Visiting
                             Scholar at Casa de las Américas / Prográma des Estudios sobre Afroamérica, Cuba
• 2010–2019         Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Latin American Studies, Free University
                             of Berlin, Germany
• 2017                   Visiting Scholar at the Department of History and Archeology, University of the West Indies, Jamaica
• 2016–2017         Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Area Studies, University of Leipzig, Germany
• 2015                   Visiting Scholar at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA
• 2006–2009         Doctoral Fellow at DFG Research Training Group "Critical Junctures of Globalization", University of Leipzig,
                             Germany

Additional Academic Activities

• Speaker of the Regional Working Group Afroamerika, German Anthropological Association

Third Party Funding

• 2019–2020         Postdoctoral Scholarship at the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script", Free University 
                             of Berlin
• 2016–2019         Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung, own research project "Slavery Reparations in the Caribbean: Transregional Perspectives
                             on Actors, Debates, and the Politics of History"
• 2015                   Scholarship of the research-alumni program of the Free University of Berlin, Visiting Scholar at the Department
                             of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, USA
• 2017                   Gender Equality Fund, Free University of Berlin for Postdoctoral Research in Jamaica
• 2010                   Scholarship of the Saxonian State Ministry for Science and the Arts
• 2006–2009         PhD Fellowship at DFG Research Training Group "Critical Junctures of Globalization", University of Leipzig,
                             Germany
•                            various conference, printing, and travel grants

Selected Publications 

• Santería und ihre Globalisierung in Kuba: Tradition und Innovation in einer afrokubanischen Religion. Reihe "Religion in der Gesellschaft". Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag 2012.
• Transatlantic Caribbean: Dialogues of People, Practices, Ideas (with: I. Kummels, S. Rinke, B. Timm (eds.). Reihe "Global Studies". Bielefeld: transcript 2014.
• Globale Ungleichheiten in der longue durée: Kolonialismus, Sklaverei und Forderungen nach Wiedergutmachung. (with M. Boatcă). In: K. Fischer, M. Grandner (eds.): Globale Ungleichheit: Über Zusammenhänge von Kolonialismus, Arbeitsverhältnissen und Naturverbrauch. Reihe "Gesellschaft – Entwicklung – Politik". Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2019, 91–107
• Reassessing the Compensation Payments to British Slave Owners in Caribbean Claims for Reparations. In: Sociologus 70 no. 2 (in press).
• Das fortdauernde Erbe der Sklaverei in der Karibik: Warum karibische Staaten Reparationen von Europa fordern. In: Comparativ – Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung Vol. 29 no. 6 (2019): 104–120.
• Caribbean Leaders in the Transnational Struggle for Slavery Reparations. In: A. Bandau, A. Brüske, N. Ueckmann (eds.): Reshaping Glocal Dynamics of the Caribbean: Relaciones y Desconexiones – Relations et Déconnexions – Relations and Disconnections. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing 2018, 281–296.
• Mobilizing Transnational Agency for Slavery Reparations: The Case of Jamaica. In: The Journal of African American History 103, no. 1–2 (Winter/Spring 2018), 133–162.
• Caribbean Activism for Slavery Reparations: An Overview. In: W. Beushausen, M. Brandel, J. Farquharson, M. Littschwager, A. McPherson, J. Roth (eds.): Practices of Resistance in the Caribbean: Narratives, Aesthetics and Politics. London: Routledge 2018, 137–150.
• Las religiones afrocubanas frente a la política migratoria entre Cuba y Estados Unidos. In: Foro de Debate sobre Cuba, Iberoamericana, XV, 57 (2015), 179–184.
• Transatlantische Entwürfe von Yoruba-Tradition in der afrokubanischen Santería. In: H. Drotbohm, I. Kummels (eds.): Afroatlantische Allianzen. Sonderheft der Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. 136 (2), 2011, 265–287. 
•  Reassessing the Compensation Payments to British Slave Owners in Caribbean Claims for Reparations. In: Sociologus 70 (2) (in press).
•  Das fortdauernde Erbe der Sklaverei in der Karibik: Warum karibische Staaten Reparationen von Europa fordern. In: Comparativ – Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung Vol. 29 no. 6 (2019): 104–120.