Dr. Veit Arlt

Imported from Grants Tool 4704215

Das vorliegende Pilotprojekt vermittelt Master-Studierenden der Sozialwissenschaften in der Schweiz, Mali und Guinea das praktische, methodologische und theoretische Handwerkszeug zum kollektiven wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten über kontinentale Grenzen hinweg. Schlüsselaktivitäten sind zwei parallel veranstaltete Seminare zu sozialwissenschaftlicher Theorie und Methodologie sowie gemeinsame Workshops an den jeweiligen Universitäten. Eine zentrale Innovation des Projekts ist die Entwicklung einer Online-Lernplattform. Sie wird kontinuierlich an die Bedarfe der verschiedenen universitären Kontexte angepasst und kann für zukünftige Lehr- und Forschungskooperationen genutzt werden. Ziel ist es, die Internationalisierung und Digitalisierung der Sozialwissenschaften in der Schweiz innovativ voranzutreiben, gerade in Bereichen mit bislang ungenutztem Zukunftspotenzial.

At 3.5% Africa has the highest urbanization rate in the whole world. The potential effects of these staggering growth rates are relevant for all Africans, both in the urban as well as in the rural areas. By 2040 the continent's cities are expected to have to accommodate 79 Million additional inhabitants. Between 2040 and 2050 the figure will rise to a staggering 84 Million. The latest UN-Habitat report forecasts that by 2025 Africa's urban population will outstrip that of Europe and Latin America together. No wonder that a growing number of researchers, institutions and governments are paying more and more attention to urbanization in Africa. This growing interest focuses on whether rapid urbanization will overwhelm African governments and societies or whether it reflects the increasing importance of the middle classes, a factor which is held by many to account for Africa's positive economic performance of late. African urbanization trends raise several issues that are of interest to scholars. These range from politics (what does the growing importance of city dwellers mean to the character of politics?), through economics (will urbanization undermine or foster efforts at overcoming inequalities?), all the way to social (e.g. are African social relations changing in any significant way as a result of these trends? How do Africans live their cities?) and cultural issues (e.g. will urban life styles dominate the rural? How will the rural and the urban relate to each other in the future?). The key issue, however, is how urbanization processes in Africa transform conventional objects of African Studies and how do scholars of Africa gear up to face such changes? This is the question which the Centre for African Studies at the University of Basel (CASB) in Switzerland wishes to invite scholars of Africa to engage with in a more conscious and systematic manner. While the urban will be prominent, the proposed conference theme will also look into the entanglements of the rural with the urban, especially with a view to addressing an implicit assumption underlying the study of Africa and which concerns the supposed rural 'nature' of the continent as well as the constitutive nature of the tension between tradition and modernity. While over the past few decades a self-critical attitude within many disciplines has led to a weakening of these assumptions, the urban continues arguably to be seen as the exception or, at any rate, as analytically less consequential than the rural. ECAS 2017 "Urban Africa - Urban Africans" will, therefore, be an occasion for rethinking African Studies, but also for exploring and deepening research avenues that many researchers working on urban and rural issues have taken up over recent years. There is a critical mass to be harnessed in the effort to push the frontiers of critical European knowledge production on Africa. Over 1300 participants attended this convention organised by the Centre for African Studies Basel and the Swiss Society for African Studies on behalf of the Research Network of African Studies Centres in Europe AEGIS . They presented 1020 papers in 204 thematic panels and engaged in 10 round table discussions, 18 book launches, 13 film screenings and 13 meetings and were inspired by 4 keynote lectures.

The primary objective of this Agreement is the development of cooperative efforts between the University of Basel and the University of Namibia, which will enhance the academic interchange between the two parties. Recognizing the importance of mutual collaboration and the contributions to society made by institutions of higher education, the parties desire to promote exchange between the faculty and students of the two institutions as well as the exchange of academic and research information.

This endowed researcher's position Namibian and Southern African Studies aims at initiating and building projects of research and cooperation related to the holdings of the Basler Afrika Bibliographien. In connection with these research activities four hours of interdisciplinary teaching in African Studies will be offered each semester supporting the curricula of History and Geography in partiular.

The world we live in has evidently turned iconic and pictorial (a turn heralded most prominently by G. Boehm and W.J.T. Mitchell). In the course of the past decades, scholars, artists and media professionals have increasingly engaged critically with visual sources, in particular photographs, in their work. In a parallel development, and partly related to the latter, the focus on the archive as a bounded and static storage area has been variously challenged, and attention has shifted to perceiving and examining the "archive" as a process and open subject of research per se. Indeed, we can relate the "archive" to identities, mnemonic devices and the occupancy of space, hence the notion of the "living archive". The virtual ubiquity of photographic collections and archives goes hand to hand with huge numbers of photographic images which have become publicly accessible. However, because of the abundance of images - the images' various uses notwithstanding - a broad set of questions as to what we are to make of historical photographs and how we can relate them to the "archive" preoccupies and challenges many users, both academic and non-academic. On the one hand, the conference will conclude the two-year project "Cameroon Photo Press Archives. Protection, Conservation, Access" which aims at rendering a substantial amount of the archive's material more easily accessible. It shall engage scholars, media professionals and artists from Cameroon, Africa, and abroad on a platform to discuss practical, methodological and theoretical questions that arise in critically dealing with photographs and their contexts in distinct fields of activity, disciplines and archival settings. On the other hand, the event will not simply serve to promote the Buea Press Photo Archives in a narrowly conceived manner, but instead attempt to place the project within a broader framework of the "circulation of knowledge" by means of a) accessing varied visual information resources and b) targeting users with a view to validating visual heritage within the wider realm of its place in the "archive".

By now it is widely acknowledged that health is both a condition for and an outcome of sustainable development. In many cases, the best choices for health are also the best choices for the physical environment; and the most equitable and environment-friendly choices are also good for health. However, up to now, the links between debates in sustainable development and in public health/health promotion remain weak. The motto "joint research and action for healthy people in healthy societies on a healthy planet" formulated by Kickbusch (2010:40) links the two debates. Moving in this direction means tackling 'wicked problems'. Students should thus learn to 'think out of their box'. As experts in public health, for instance, they will need to go beyond the boundaries of health systems. Students have to develop capabilities in joint analysis and planning in inter- and transnational partnerships with scientists from other fields, politicians, practitioners and activists, which calls for a transdisciplinary approach. Further they will be introduced to systemic approaches to health in social-ecological systems based on the "one health" concept, linking human and animal health and EcoHealth, which formally relates health and ecosystem services.

The Cameroon Press Photo Archives (CPPA) were founded in Buea in January 1955 by the British colonial administration and operational until Anglophone West Cameroon unified with the Francophone Republic of Cameroun under President Ahmadou Ahidjo to form the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972. The photographers working with the government were responsible for covering the President's and Prime Minister's agendas as well as any official events of public interest. Thus, the photographic material held by the CPPA grants a unique view of Cameroon's history for a time period which was, and still is, crucial for its political and social formation. This project not only secures the material for future research but also raises the awareness of the government and the Cameroonian public for this invaluable visual heritage. The project "Cameroon Photo Press Archives. Protection, conservation, access" funded through the Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library has three main components: The first part consists in the digitisation of the photographic holdings of the CPPA in Buea. 3'500 groundsheets will be scanned as well as a selection of about 15'000 negatives from a total of about 85'000 negatives according to predefined criteria such as the state of decay of the negative and the relevance and quality of the contact print (evidence gained from the contact prints on the groundsheets where such a pre-selection has already been made by the photographers). Additional attention will be given to some basic conservational measures in that the groundsheets will be rearranged in new labelled acid free sleeves. The second part aims at raising the awareness of archivists and young researchers from universities in Cameroon and Switzerland to the challenges and chances work and research in and with photographic material can entail as well as in capacity building measures for this group of persons both on a practical and a theoretical level. The third component consists in negotiating between the Ministry of Communication (responsible for the CPPA) and the Ministry of Culture (in charge of the National Archives branch in Buea) the relocation of the photographic material to the adjacent Buea National Archives. This move from the CPPA to the National Archives would firstly improve the protection of the vulnerable material and secondly facilitate the access of researchers to the visual records.

Empires of the Visual aimed to explore and to synthesize the history of modern public visual production and consumption of space in Southern Africa. The project was based on the hypothesis that the varied southern African visual economies of space are framed and patterned by a South African claim to hegemonic control of visual production and communication. The project reflected on the concept of a South African empire which articulates itself in a claim to socio-economic and cultural control. This concept of empire is part of a new approach to the region's history that aims to overcome limitations of the dominant nationalist historiography of South Africa and to understand the region's history from its margins. The project was concerned, in particular, with questions of visuality and space: Is it possible to identify and locate a supposed South African empire as a distinct geographical space, and, are there specific spatial features and visual representations identifying and describing such a space? To answer these questions the project focused on three main spatial occurrences: firstly, on railways and roads as the arteries of empire, secondly, on the built environment or architectural interventions as the spatial design of empire, and thirdly, on fences as the grid of empire, that is the markers of spatial delimitations which define and constitute space around them. The project treated these three thematic foci separately to a certain extent but developed a perspective which accounts for their material and visual interweavements. Conceptually the said spatial interventions were not merely analysed in terms of their infrastructural relevance. They were also explored as objects which formed sites and spaces where the South African empire became a visible and tangible experience, both directly, as physical or material reality, and indirectly, as mediated visual representation. The research also considered subaltern voices and dynamics that countered attempts to create a homogenised imperial space. The empirical focus of the project was primarily on Namibia and South Africa representing the extreme poles of the South African empire: the peripheral colony and the region's heartland. Methodologically the research project was based on archival studies, - including established ones such as public archives and more hidden ones, such as personal archives - on oral histories, as well as on syntheses of existing case studies.

The Humer Foundation (Humer-Stiftung zur Förderung des wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses) funds PhD projects of young scholars at the Centre for African Studies Basel and thereby supports the strategic development of the Centre. Fellows: Richard Faustine Sambaiga: Youth, sex and the city (2010-2013, thesis submitted 2013, supervisor Prof Brigit Obrist, Medical Anthropology) Barbara Heer: Exploring the Public - A Comparative Ethnography of Public Spaces in Maputo and Johannesburg (2010-2013, supervisor Prof Till Förster, Social Anthropology, thesis submitted 2015) Stephanie Bishop: Zambian Water Diaries: Technology in Practice (2011-2014, supervisor: Prof Elísio Macamo, African Studies) Pierrick Leu: Riding motorcycles, making urban road traffic. An ethnomethodological perspective on moto-mobility in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (2011-2014, supervisor: Prof Elísio Macamo, African Studies) Melanie Boehi: The South African Botanical Complex: Plants, Nature and Urban Life in Cape Town (ca. 1913-2013) (2012-2015, thesis submitted 2017, supervisor: Prof Patrick Harries, History) Joschka Philipps: Crystallizing Contention. A cumulative dissertation on youth, politics, and urban violence in Conakry, Kampala, and beyond (2012-2015, thesis submitted 2016, supervisor: Prof Elísio Macamo, African Studies) Christopher Barratt: Using Next Generation Sequencing data to estimate the Biodiversity value of the Coastal Forests of East Africa (2013-2016, submitted 2017, supervisors: Prof Peter Nagel and Simon Loader, Phd, Biogeography) Vladimir Wingate: Terrestrial ecosystem change monitoring: Satellite remote sensing the Namibian savannah biomes in the context of the global carbon cycle and local livelihoodsa (2013-2016, submitted 2018, supervisors: Prof Nikolaus Kuhn and Lena Bloemertz, PhD, Physical Geography) Raja Daouah: Emerging Trends, Developments and Opportunities of Islamic Finance: The Moroccan Case (2017-2020, supervisor: Aleksander Berentsen, Economics) Andrea Kifyasi: Diplomatic History of China's Medical Assistance to Africa: A case Study of Tanzania, 1960s-2015 (2017-2020, supervisor: Prof Julia Tischler, History Stephen Kapinde: Political Sermons in Kenyas Quest for Democratic Governance between 1986 and 2010: A case study of the selected sermons from the three Anglican Clergy (2017-2020, supervisor: Prof Andreas Heuser, Theology) Julia Rensing: Narratives and Negotiations of Colonial Legacies in Namibia and Germany - A Post-Colonial Heterotopia? (2019-2022, supervisor: Lorena Rizzo, History) Esther Tolulope Ilesanmi: Engendering the Colony; Maternal Health, Indigenous Knowledge and European Medicine in South-West Nigeria, 1925-1960 (2019-2022, supervisor: Prof. Julia Tischler, History)