Research

My doctoral research project deals with the environmental degradation of the Falémé in South-East Senegal due to artisanal and industrial gold mining along its shore. The river constitutes the population's most important and only natural sweet water source which is why people largely depend on it for their their everyday life and more drastically said, for surviving. Long established subsistence forms, cultural identities and social mechanisms are endangered by the accumulation of toxic chemicals in the Falémé. These are used both by local and African migrant mine workers and by international mining companies in order to extract the gold.Despite the striking ecological impact and risks for human and animal health, there are different and competing representations of the environmental degradation of the Falémé, largely depending on whether the people benefit from the degradation's cause or not. These representations are, among others, formulated in cosmological and moral assessments that simultaneously demonstrate and inform different understandings of pollution itself and human-environment relations. To capture the diversity of representations and understandings, I am conducting research in two regions: in the North of Tambacounda, where people suffer from the ecological effects of gold mining without economically benefiting from the gold itself and in the South-East of Kédougou, where gold mining has become a major mean to generate income.The aim of my research is thus to explore how the environmental degradation of the Falémé sets off social-cultural and economic transformations and which normative resources and discursive framings people draw on to make sense of it.At the same time, I am working on a research project on Art and Islam in cooperation with the Research Center “Aesthethic Appraoches to Religion and Spirituality” at the Center for Islamic Theology in Münster. The interdisciplinary project itself combines theological and anthropological perspectives while dealing with contemporary art forms, currently mainly dance and music, in Muslim societies and Muslim artists in the West. In this context, I am exploring how Muslim musicians in urban Senegal position themselves in the ongoing and widespread debate about the permissibility of music in Islam. I am particularly interested in the moral assessments and theological understandings that inform their personal opinions as well as in the (moral) concerns of their families that are reason for the high skepticism of music as a possible career path for their children. The aim is to find out how Senegalese Muslim musicians navigate between “being a good Muslim” and being a musician in a majority Muslim country.

Research Focus

• Environmental Pollution
• Mineral Extraction and Economies
• Islam in West Africa (special focus on Islam & Music and Islam & Politics)
• North-South Migration

Research Area

• West Africa (Senegal)

Teaching Approach

Will follow soon