Decolonising the Future Academy in Africa and Beyond: Institutional Development and Collaboration

What does it mean to decolonise academia in Africa? Is this important project limited to the humanities? Is it a project for the future? Are there forerunners at African universities today? The contributors to this volume show different trajectories for anthropology as a discipline and for decolonising academia across the continent and beyond. They offer a variety of perspectives, especially regarding collaboration between African and German scholars in the areas of research, teaching and institutional development: While some are hopeful and take inspiration from earlier experiences of disciplinary and methodological developments in academic decolonisation and international collaborations, others remain critical and call for more radical attempts at decolonisation.

Michaela Pelican, born 1972, works as a professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Cologne. She is the rector’s representative for international affairs and the speaker of the Global South Studies Center Cologne (GSSC). She did her doctorate at the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and was a junior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale. Before coming to Cologne in 2012, she was a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Zurich and a visiting fellow at the University of Kyoto. Her research focuses on migration, inequality, conflict, indigeneity and research methodology with a regional focus on West Africa, the Gulf States and China. Karim Zafer, born 1981, works as a project manager and is responsible for the coordination of academic collaboration with the MENA-Region at the Divison for International Affairs at the University of Cologne. He is also a lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne, from which he received his PhD in 2024 and Master’s degree in 2016. Before migrating to Germany in 2013, he studied and worked in the fields of tourism and Egyptology in Egypt. His research interests include (forced) migration, youth, decolonial research methodology, and the MENA region. Michael Bollig, born 1961, works as a professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Cologne. He did his doctorate at the University of Tübingen on violence and conflict management in northern Kenya. He started at the University of Cologne in 2000 and established a focus on environmental challenges and socio-cultural dynamics in rural Africa. He has been speaker (and co-speaker) of the collaborative research centre (CRC) Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa (2000-2007) and the CRC Future Rural Africa (2018-ongoing). Between 2011 and 2015 he was vice rector for international affairs at the University of Cologne.