Recognition for University of Bayreuth Ethnography Researchers
The sociologist Dr Luis Bastidas and former Bayreuth anthropologist Dr Valerie Nur were awarded the Ethnography Research Prize at this year’s Fieldwork Days conference at TU Dortmund University.
Dr Luis Bastidas of the University of Bayreuth was awarded the Ethnography Research Prize.
Thomas Eberle
Dr Luis Bastidas received the Ethnography Research Prize for his fieldwork on religion, violence and the Anima death cult in Puerto Berrío, a region in the interior of Colombia that has been profoundly affected by violence. Bastidas, who comes from Cali, Colombia, earned a BA in Sociology from Universidad del Valle in 2012 and an MA from the National University of Colombia in 2015. Supervised by Prof. Dr Bernt Schnettler and Prof. Dr Tom Kaden, he completed his doctorate at the University of Bayreuth in 2025. Since 2025, Dr Bastidas has been a research associate at the Chair of Cultural and Sociology of Religion. He is also co-organiser of the “Colloquium on Latin America” at the University of Bayreuth.
from left: Dr. Valerie Nur, Prof. Dr. Norbert Schröer, Pr. Dr. Angelika Poferl.
Dr Valerie Nur was honoured for her book The Impermanence of Things: Craftsmanship, Family and Mobility among the Tuareg in Niger (Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2024), which emerged from her doctoral research at the University of Bayreuth on artisanal skills, mobility and family among Tuareg craftspeople. Valerie Nur studied Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, History and African Religions in Bayreuth, Basel, Aix-en-Provence and Berlin. From 2017 to 2021, she worked as a research associate at the University of Bayreuth. She completed her doctorate at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS) under the supervision of Prof. Dr Gerd Spittler. She subsequently received a postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Bayreuth aimed at promoting equal opportunities for women in research and teaching. In autumn 2023, she was a Fellow of the Cluster of Excellence “Africa Multiple”. Since 2023, Dr Nur has been a research associate at the Chair of Flight, Migration and Social Mobility at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich.
About the Research Field
Ethnography is a central and well-established approach within qualitative empirical social research. It is used to investigate human action, lived worlds and everyday as well as institutional practices through methods centred on participant observation and related research techniques. Its roots lie in pragmatist and symbolic interactionist sociology, anthropological and ethnological cultural analysis, and sociological studies of both everyday and specialised social worlds.
Prof. Dr. Bernt Schnettler
Telefon: +49 (0)921 / 55-4195
E-Mail: schnettler@uni-bayreuth.de