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Prof. Dr. Dorothea Schulz

Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology | Head of Department

  • News and information on consultation hours

    Consultation hours during winter term 2024/25:

    • Wednesdays 14:15-15:30

    Registration via LearnWeb folder: ‘Office Hours Dorothea Schulz’

    Please ask Ms. Osterheider at the secretary's office for the password.

  • Research

    My research, publications, and teaching are centered on the Anthropology of Religion, of Mental Health and Spiritual Wellbeing, Political Anthropology, Islam in Africa, Gender Studies and Media Studies. I also bring to my research and teaching a strong background in critical theory, social theory, and the anthropology of social organization. I have extensive field research experience in West and East Africa, particularly in southern Mali and southwestern Uganda.
    In my new book “Political Legitimacy in Postcolonial Mali”, I capitalize on my long-standing acquaintance with Malian politics and social history to make sense of the political crisis that has shaken the country for more than a decade. My analysis centers on the attitudes, judgments and practices by which inhabitants of a rural area in southwestern Mali attribute (or disclaim) the legitimacy of the state and of individual powerholders. I also draw on my earlier work on praise-singers – often referred to as "griots"– whose mass-mediated performances aimed to bestow praise and legitimacy on Mali’s changing political regimes, At the heart of this analytic endeavor is an effort to interrogate different dimensions, meanings and limits of political legitimacy in Mali.

    Since 2014, I have embarked on a research project that addresses questions pertaining to the broader thematic fields of religious pluralism and of spiritual and emotional well-being. Drawing on empirical research on Muslim minorities in two different regions of Uganda, I address the interplay between mental health, mourning, emotional coping, and future-making in a society haunted by traumatic experiences related to civil war. My analysis reaches beyond common approaches to „trauma“ through a sustained attention to the discursive and auditory practices and symbolic-aesthetic forms through which Muslims and Christians seek to achieve greater public prominence and to partake in debates over the ordering of moral and social life. By situating these dynamics in the broader context of Ugandan state politics, I explore points of articulations and tensions between local-level and national politics of religious difference, and between conflicting understandings of how past “trauma“ can be healed.

  • Research Focus

    • Anthropology of Religion
    • Health and Well-being
    • Political Anthropology
    • Islam in Africa
    • Gender Studies
    • Media Anthropology

  • Research Area

    Will follow soon

  • Teaching Approach

    Will follow soon

  • Scholarships and awards

    2016 Fellow, Center for AFrican Studies - Harvard University (USA)
    2011 Fellow, Berlin Graduate School "Muslim CUltures and Societes" (USA)
    2010 Prize for excellence in teaching, University of Colon
    2010 Visiting scholar, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Oslo (Norwegen)
    2005 Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, Ithaca (USA)
    2000 Visiting Scholar, Dept. of Anthropology. University of Chicago (USA)
    1996 Prize Frobenius, University of Frankfurt

  • Editorial Board and other services

    2006- Lit Verlag Series “Mande Studies”
    2015- Konstanz University Press Series “Ethnographien”
    2015- Expert Representative “Anthropology/Islamic Studies”, Alexander-von-Humboldt-Program
    2019- Expert Representative/Member of the Senate, DFG (German Science Foundation)
    2019- Member of Scientific Board, Institute for Advanced Studies, Berlin

  • Current Projects / Research - (Third-party Funding)

    EXC 2060 B3-20 - Testing and contesting religious pluralism in Uganda (2019 - 2025)
    Drittmittel: DFG - Exzellenzcluster - Förderkennzeichnen: EXC 2060/1
    The auditory making of religious pluralism in Uganda (2019 - 2020)
    Drittmittel: DFG - Sachbeihilfe/Einzelfördrung - Förderkennzeichnen: SCHU 1276/14 -1
    Projecting Futures: Resource use conflict, intergenerational tensions, and competing visions of future-making in the Rift Valley, Kenya;
    Drittmittel DFG, Teilprojekt im SFB „Future Rural Africa“ (Köln/ Bonn) (2018-2022)

  • Completed projects (third-party funding)

    2011-2016 2 Funding periods: DFG FOR 1501, “Mediality and local creativity in the negotiation of social-ecological resilience, collapse, and reorganization”, Teilprojekt im Rahmen der Forschergruppe “Resilience, Collapse, and Reorganisation in Social-Ecological Systems in Africa’s Savannahs”
    2011-2016 2 Funding periods: DFG SCHU 1276-10/1-2: Mass-mediated trans local field of Senegalese migrants in Europe
    2012-2015

    DFG SCHU 1276-11/1: Migratory projects of immobile actors: Expectations, Discourse and practices of male youth in the port city of Mahajanga / Madagascar