Archiv der Kategorie: Vorträge

Photo of the site called Meqem-bara (those who taught goodness), the site of the first parliament of caxalmaacis in the 13th century.

Online Presentation: The Madqa (mad‘a) project in Djibouti – recognition for Afar traditional law as intangible heritage

Saleh Mohamed Hassan, CERD/ ILD 

24 April 2025,18:00 CET (registration see below)

The Madqà, the customary law of the Afar people, is a traditional legal system practiced in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. It plays a crucial role in conflict resolution, social cohesion, and the preservation of Afar cultural values. However, modernization and socio-political changes threaten its continuity.

To safeguard and promote this living heritage, Djibouti initiated the official registration process on February 21, 2025, by listing the Madqà in the national inventory at the Ministry of Culture. On March 31, 2025, the official request for inclusion on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage was submitted, with the consent of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

This project aims to document, preserve, and transmit the Madqà to future generations by integrating it into governance strategies, organizing educational programs, and creating audiovisual archives. The application meets UNESCO’s criteria by demonstrating the Madqà’s living nature, its role in social peace, and the active participation of Afar communities in its safeguarding. Recognizing the Madqà as intangible heritage would enhance the visibility of African customary justice systems and strengthen their contribution to peacebuilding. The success of this initiative relies on the commitment of Afar communities, governments, and international cultural institutions, ensuring that this ancestral tradition continues to benefit future generations.

Saleh Mohamed Hassan Laqdé is a research fellow at the Language Institute (Institut des langues) within the CERD (centre d’études et de recherches de Djibouti – Djibouti centre for studies and research). He holds a degree in English literature and is specialised in Afar language and literature. Currently a research associate in the IRICA Institut des Recherches Indépendant de la Corne d’Afrique – Independent Research Institute for the Horn of Africa) project on aging in Djibouti. Member of the group of experts of the steering committee of the process of inscription of the Afar madqà (Afar traditional law) on the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO, for which the submitting country is Djibouti. Founding member of the „Afar Speaking Centre“ of International PEN and a known Afar poet.

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Online Vortrag: Zur Intersektion von Fluchtmigration, Gender und Klimakrise am Beispiel Somalia

Samia Aden

31. Januar 2025,18:00 CET (Anmeldung siehe unten)

Die Auswirkungen der globalen Klimakrise rücken Fragen nach Klimagerechtigkeit in den Fokus politisch-aktivistischen Engagements. Die eurozentristischen Diskurse zum Klimawandel und zur Klimaneutralität betonen technische Lösungen und halten an der bisherigen Ausrichtung auf Wirtschaftswachstum fest. So führen Projekte unter dem neuen „grünen“ Deckmantel der erneuerbaren Energien im Globalen Süden zu Rohstoffabbau, Landkonflikten und Menschenrechtsverletzungen. Die Zerstörung von Ökosystemen, die Ausbeutung globaler ökologischer und sozialer Ressourcen sowie damit verbundene globale Ungleichheiten aufgrund geopolitischer Machtverhältnisse werden weitgehend ausgeblendet. Zu beobachten ist das Fortschreiten post- und neokolonialer Abhängigkeiten. Stimmen indigener und rassifizierte Bevölkerungsgruppen im Globalen Süden bleiben in diesen Debatten und den damit verbundenen politischen Entscheidungen weitestgehend marginalisiert. Dabei sind sie es, die bereits heute und in Zukunft von den Auswirkungen des Klimawandels am meisten betroffen sind und auch sein werden. Der Vortrag diskutiert die Notwenigkeit dekolonialer und intersektionaler Perspektiven auf die Klimawandeldebatte und -krise. Hierfür betrachte ich zunächst den Diskurs um Klimawandel und Klimaneutralität als Form epistemischer Gewalt und Ausdruck kolonialer Kontinuität von Repräsentations- und Deutungsmacht. Am Beispiel eines ethnographischen Forschungsprojektes in Somalia werden dann die Perspektiven und Erfahrungen von Dürre betroffenen ehemaligen Nomad:innen in Geflüchtetencamps in Somalia nachgezeichnet. Der Vortrag zeigt, für wen die Klimakrise am folgenreichsten ist und wie Gender, Klimakrise und Fluchtmigration miteinander verschränkt sind. Ich argumentiere, dass die imperialistische Lebensweise des globalen Nordens das koloniale Objekt der „Dritten Welt Frau“ in Form von Binnengeflüchteten im Globalen Süden (re-)produziert.

Samia Aden, MA., Soziale Arbeit, war 2016–2023 wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Universität Kassel im Fachbereich Sozialisation mit dem Schwerpunkt Migration und Interkulturelle Bildung. Sie lehrt u.a. zu den Themen Migrationspädagogik und Soziale Arbeit in der (Flucht-)Migrationsgesellschaft. In ihrem Dissertationsprojekt beschäftigt sie sich mit Jugend und Transnationalität unter den Bedingungen von Flucht und Asyl. Hierfür hat sie sowohl in Somalia als auch in Deutschland ethnographisch geforscht. Weitere Forschungsinteressen sind die Auswirkungen von Migrationsregimen auf transnationale Familienbeziehungen und klimawandelbedingte Fluchtmigrationsbewegungen. Zudem interessiert sie sich für macht- und herrschaftskritische methodologische Reflexionen in der flucht- und migrationsbezogenen Forschung.

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Sudan Crisis Discussed: Anthropological Insights into Sudan’s Ongoing War and Displacement – an online discussion hosted by WAKHVA

Speakers:
Mohamed Bakhit (University of Khartoum)
Valerie Hänsch, (LMU Munich/Ethnological Museum Berlin)

15 January 2025, 18:00 – 19:30 CET (registration see below)

On April 15, 2023, violent clashes erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan, resulting in the displacement of more than 10.2 million people, including internally displaced people (IDPs), asylum seekers and refugees, by October 2024. Sudanese people have been confronted with insecurities, war and economic crisis for decades. They have responded to this by being mobile and creating translocal livelihoods. With the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023, the situation has deteriorated dramatically for many people who have been forced to leave Khartoum and other zones progressively affected by military operations to look for a safe place in urban and rural areas of central and eastern Sudan or in neighboring countries.  Moreover, the war in Sudan altered the migration policies toward Sudanese people not only in neighboring countries, but also of the European Union and international organizations. Based on a long-term engagement in anthropological researches about forced mobilities dynamics and artistic responses to political changes in Sudan, our intervention examines these processes by looking at the people’s lives and agency on the one hand, and the ways in which national governments, communities, NGOs and international stakeholders influence different contexts of war-driven displacement on the other.

Mohamed BAKHIT, PhD in Anthropology (Bayreuth University), Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Khartoum, is a postdoctoral researcher with Alexander von Humboldt Foundation based at the School of Social Sciences in Friedensau University. He was Director of the Department of Anthropology, University of Khartoum (2018-23). His research focuses on identity, urbanization, forced migration, minority groups and citizenship.

Valerie HÄNSCH is a postdoctoral researcher at the Anthropological Museum in Berlin. She holds a PhD from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS) and held positions at the University of Bayreuth and LMU Munich. In her work, she explored technologies, large infrastructures, socio-environmental transformations and displacement in the Sudan. Her latest research investigates the links between activism, artistic practices and affects in the Sudanese revolutionary process. Currently she works in a collaborative research project on audiovisual heritage in the Sudan.

If you like to attend the presentation please register via this email!

Online Presentation: Retrospect of two years journey of Yimtubezina Museum and Cultural Center and its Curatorial Practice on Temporary Exhibitions.

Abel Assefa

12 December 2024,18:00 CET (registration see below)

Since the official opening of Yimtubezina Museum in December 2022, it has managed to present 9 exhibitions, which six of them were temporary and the other from its permanent museum collections. The museum with a mission to creat a platform  for cross cultural exchange and inter generational dialogue, its temporary exhibitions are themed on a specific topics that could possibly valorize, document and promote memories and urban cultures as well as history and cultural heritages of Ethiopia. The presentation focuses and discusses the process for establishment of the Museum on a historical house built in 1900 for a residential use by W/ro Yimtubezinash Habte. While the presentation highlights the exhibitions that have been presented so far It also discuss how its temporary exhibitions are initiated and implemented by providing summary for selected exhibition ideas. Through collaboration with different institutions; providing platform for Artists’s and collectors and making awareness of various topics; this presentation highlights the process of curatorial execution of temporary exhibitions process from its inception to execution.

Abel Assefa is Director and Chief curator at Yimtubezina Museum and Cultural Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  He also participates in the MuseumsLab 2024 program in Berlin. He holds a BSc in Heritage Conservation from Mekele University and an MA in Archeology and Heritage Management from Addis Ababa University.

If you like to attend the presentation please register via this email!

Header Ethiopian Popular Music

Online-Presentation: Ethiopian Popular Music through Political and Cultural Shifts

Timkehet Teffera Mekonnen

14 November 2024,18:00 CET (registration see below)

In my presentation, I will introduce my recently published book, Ethiopian Popular Music through Political and Cultural Shifts. The music traditions and practices in Ethiopia are among the less explored fields of study.
The history of Ethiopian popular music is closely tied to Western influences, which began penetrating the region in the 15th century. I will explore the impact of these external influences and examine the emergence and gradual development of this music sector in Ethiopia, continuing up until the 1970s, a period often considered the zenith of Ethiopian popular music.
It is noteworthy that military music significantly shaped the socio-cultural and socio-political landscape of the genre. This includes the formation of fanfare ensembles and military bands, which paved the way for the emergence of private music bands. These private bands played a vital role in advancing the genre and making a significant impact.

Cover: Ethiopian Popular Music
Book Cover Ethiopian Popular Music by Timkehet Teferra Mekonnen

If you like to attend the presentation please register via this email!

Video Online-Presentation: The Fragility of Addis Ababa’s Urban Heritage

Piet Nieder

11. July 2024,18:00 CET

In its early decades, the Ethiopian capital, founded in 1886, witnessed a very specific form of architecture. At the beginning of the East African country’s first urbanisation process, a mixture of vernacular knowledge and a new cosmopolitan mindset led to an architectural type that local professionals refer to as the ‘Addis Ababa Style’: Pavilion-like buildings of different sizes, made of stone, earth, and wood, characterised by expressive pinched roofs, generous verandas with curtain walls, and a high degree of detailing. Today, those graceful, appropriate, and nature-based buildings are under threat of being swallowed up due to shortsighted economic – or political? – interests.
In cooperation with the Institute for Architecture in Addis Ababa (EiABC), architects of Berlin’s Technical University studied this typology with regard to its embeddedness in local resources, climatic conditions, and craftsmanship. As such, they employed the ‘Addis Ababa House’ as a case study to discuss the possibility of a non-industrial building type that reflects the desire for a cosmopolitan urban life.


The two pictures were taken on the same day in Piassa. Left: Locals leaf through the new book „The House of Addis Ababa“. Right: Piassa residents are forced to demolish their inherited homes within a few days.

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Piet Nieder is a practicing architect and researcher at Technical University Berlin. His doctoral thesis looks at the potential of traditional building techniques for architectural solutions in transforming urban territories in Ethiopia. He holds a Master of Science in Architecture from ETH Zurich. Between 2012–2013, he taught architectural design at the Ethiopian Institute for Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC) of Addis Ababa University.

Video Online-Presentation: Abiy’s religious conception of politics and its implications for domestic and regional governance

Dereje Feyissa Dori

13. June 2024,18:00 CET

The Abiy administration represents a rupture in Ethiopian politics in many ways. This rupture is visible at least in three domains of political life: ideological shifts, ethnic power reconfiguration, and rebalance between ethnicity and the politics of national unity. In this talk I discuss Ideological shifts with an emphasis on Abiy’s religious conception of politics, evident in his messianic self-understanding, and the spiritually-animated political agency connected to that, as well as his obsession with vanity projects, and a legacy-driven big push in his port politics. Turning EPRDF’s assertive secularism upside down, Abiy’s socioeconomic transformational scheme gives the impression that „it is faith, Stupid!“. Much of „the boldness“ or „the delusion“ with which he exercised power in Ethiopia and in the wider region has roots in his religious ideological formation that draws on the tenets of the Prosperity Gospel. An aspect of this is how his political decision making is heavily informed by positive thinking and religious analogical reasoning. As strategic as he is with a background in the security sector, Abiy is also a religious practitioner. Taking the religious Abiy seriously thus provides unique insights to understand his often-unfathomable politics. As the Thomas theorem has it, not objective conditions of situations, but their (culturally grounded) definitions by the actors determines people’s actions. In the case of Abiy one could formulate this as: if he believes something to be the case, then he acts accordingly. The political reality in Ethiopia is thus shaped, to some degree, by the spiritual conceptions of its current leader.

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Dereje Feyissa Dori holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Martin-Luther University/Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He is the MIDEQ Co-Investigator for the Ethiopia – South Africa migration corridor and Adjunct Professor at Addis Ababa University. He can be contacted by email.

Video Online-Presentation: Sacred Images of Ethiopia: The Collection of Ethiopian Icons in the Museum „Fünf Kontinente“ in Munich

Carolin Schäfer

16. May 2024,18:00 CET

The dissertation project focuses on the largest collection of Ethiopian icons in Europe and aims to produce both a museum catalogue and a comprehensive guide to this object category. The Ethiopian icons in Munich have never been catalogued in a comprehensive manner before and will thus offer an important reference for those interested in these objects. Furthermore, the collection of 94 icons, produced in all the Christian regions of historic Ethiopia and datable between the 15th century and modern times, provides a vast and varied enough corpus to allow for historical and regional categorisation. Finally, these icons demonstrate an abundance of intercultural and even transreligious influences, which are likely due to the Horn of Africa’s fortunate position for trade and the spread of ideas. 

Accordingly, this PhD project has two main objectives. The first is to build categories of icons based on their places and dates of production, as well as their styles and iconographies, in the end to be able to trace the development of Ethiopians icons as they occur in the Museum Fünf Kontinente and in further museums. Secondly, the project focusses on the intercultural influences, such as by Eastern Christian, Persian, Indian, Asian, Latin, and Islamic cultures, working on the Ethiopian icons and tries to identify their origins.

Registration by email.