Andrea Behrends is Professor for Anthropology in Africa

Exploring the topic 'Lifeworlds in Crisis Situations', her work focuses on questions of mobility, conflict and conflict intervention, flight and humanitarian aid, and the effects of oil production in marginalized regions of the world. The researcher investigates the potential of coexistence in the context of diversity, especially in regions and situations marked by migration, border demarcation, and violence. Her research regions are located in West and Central Africa, where she has been a regular visitor since 1990.

After completing her master's degree in anthropology at the Free University of Berlin, Andrea Behrends received her doctorate in 2000 in the 'Social Comparison' research training group, and went on to do postdoctoral research on 'Conflict and Integration' at the Max PIanck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale). She continued her work at the Institute of Anthropology and Philosophy at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. There she was responsible for the scientific and organizational coordination of the interdisciplinary project 'Travelling Models in African Conflict Management'. In 2012 she became Principal Investigator in the German Research Foundation, DFG funded project 'Oil and Social Change in Africa', which she led together with colleagues from the Universities of Mainz and Göttingen. From 2013 she held professorships in Hamburg, Halle, Vienna, and Berlin, before she habilitated at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Hamburg in 2018.

At the University of Bayreuth, she has sought to continue her previous work, with a new focus on the everyday effects of digitization in African contexts. With the help of African and European cooperation partners, she is researching digital living environments with regard to gender relations, business formation, and governmental and international interventions or future perspectives. "The students in Bayreuth take a great interest in these topics - and the debates in our seminars are an absolute enrichment for me. In fact, the balance between research-based teaching and teaching geared to new theoretical and global developments is particularly important to me," says Prof. Dr. Andrea Behrends.