Publications

This paper explores how Burundian adolescents in the Nakivale refugee settlement, Uganda, experience umwidegemvyo, loosely translated as “freedom”, with regard to their sexuality. We draw on ethnographic research conducted between August and November 2017 with...

This volume explores the constitutive role of rhetoric in socio-cultural relations, where discursive persuasion is so important, and contains both theoretical chapters as well as fascinating examples of the ambiguities and effects of rhetoric used (un)consciously in social...

Democracy and Electoral Politics in Zambia aims to comprehend the current dynamics of Zambia's democracy and to understand what was specific about the 2015/2016 election experience. While elections have been central to understanding Zambian politics over the last decade,...

In Swahili poetry, praising God through blessings and salutations finds aesthetic expression in a plethora of genres, particularly mashairi, utendi and takhmis. In this article, I will draw attention to a lesser-known rhymed poetic genre known as gungu “songs,” in...

This paper examines the productive role of secrecy in the nexus of transnational mobility, kinship, and intimate relations among Ghanaian-Dutch and Somali-Dutch in the Netherlands. Whereas secrecy is typically understood as one person concealing knowledge from another,...

Abstract: In 2012 we returned to Southern Mali, where we have worked in the Women and Development programme of the Malian cotton company (CMDT) between 1987 and 1995. We were curious to find out what had changed for women in the cotton area since 1980.Have women been able to...

This paper examines responses to the 2015 terror attack on Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, amongst students in a secondary school in Berlin-Neukölln, Germany. The Charlie Hebdo attack occurred in the final weeks of a 19-month ethnographic study in the...