Jan Abbink

Jan Abbink is an anthropologist-historian and carries out research on the history and cultures of the Horn of Africa (Northeast Africa), particularly Ethiopia. He is Professor Emeritus of Politics and Governance in Africa at Leiden University.

He has done a number of research projects, the first one being a study of Ethiopian immigrants in Israel in the 1980s. His current projects are a socio-cultural history of South Ethiopia, an historical-cultural study of the relation between governance, political culture and religious discourse, and an ethnological study of southwest Ethiopian ethnic groups, livelihoods and conflict. He is also interested in theoretical and epistemological issues in social science.

Since 2001 Jan Abbink has been Professor (extraordinary) of African Ethnic Studies at the VU University in Amsterdam. 

Keywords: Africa, political culture, religious discourse and politics, ethnography of food cultures, governance and development, cultural history.