Abreham Alemu
Abreham Alemu Fanta is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and based at the same time at African Studies Centre in Leiden. He will be doing research on folklore and culture of the Macha Oromo, who inhabit a large part of the south-western part of Ethiopia, in Eastern and Western Wollega, Illu Aba Bor, West Showa, and Jimma zones of Oromia National Regional State. Abreham has been conducting fieldwork in the area since 1996. In 2000 he obtained his MA degree in literature at the Institute of Language Studies (ILS) at Addis Ababa University. His MA thesis is entitled: Jimma Oromo Oral Narratives: a preliminary descriptive analysis. The Jimma Oromo are one of the the sub-groups of the south-western Oromo of Ethiopia (the Macha), which are formerly known as the Five Gibe States.
Abreham is a full-time lecturer and researcher in the Department of Ethiopian languages and Literature Education, College of Education, Addis Ababa University and teaching Ethiopian literature and folklore. He has published papers on Oromo folklore and oral narratives, and gender issues.
His Ph.D. research project is entitled: Ethnicity, Local Identity, and Folklore among the South-western Oromo of Ethiopia: a comparative study, which has grown out of his longstanding professional and cultural affiliation to the Oromo, as well as the current inter- and intra-cultural situations in the Ethno Federal State of Ethiopia, in which ethnic identity and in-group consciousness is pervasive. Based on the candidate’s field experience, acquaintance with available literature and its debates on the Oromo identity, as well as ethnographically informed detailed investigation of folklore discourses (empirical data), the project aims at understanding self-perceived notions of ethnicity and local identity among the south-western Oromo of Ethiopia. The underlying assumption is the dynamism of culture and the reflexive process and reciprocal relationships between folklore and its social and physical settings. Systematic knowledge of such an integral and vital part of culture can not only advance cross-cultural comparative the nature and function of folklore in everyday life of social collectivities, but also contribute to scientific understanding of the dynamics of multi-ethnicity, group formation, and conflict in largely non-literate societies.
WOTRO (the Netherlands Foundation for Research in the Tropics) supports this project under the promotion and supervision of J. Abbink.