Postcolonial Hierarchies

Darja Wolfmeier

Darja is a PhD researcher, examining how postcolonial hierarchies are produced by humanitarian organizations working in situations of peace and conflict. Postcolonial continuities and racism within the humanitarian aid sector have been criticized for some time now.

Adam Sandor

Adam’s research for the project examines the transnational governance of violence in the Global South with a focus on African security dynamics. The project asks to what extent do Africa-led security initiatives aiming to tackle armed Islamist groups challenge postcolonial security relationships and security practices.

Patricia Pinky Ndlovu

Patricia’s research project examines three overlapping and interconnected issues in the minibus taxi industry in South Africa: conflict, armed violence, and gender relations. Women struggle to operate within this industry which is steeped in and constituted by violent patriarchy. It investigates the multidimensional forms of ‘everyday violence’ that women face in their attempts to navigate […]

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Sabelo’s project examines how epistemology frames ontology. His project investigates how imperial/colonial epistemes have reproduced themselves in the form of what Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak termed ‘postcolonial reason’ and how this in turn informed a very problematic postcolonial political modernity characterized by conflicts and violence related to postcolonial state-making, postcolonial nation-building and democratization.

Maria Ketzmerick

Maria’s research focuses on topics within post/decolonial security research, Central Africa (especially Cameroon) in a regional, transnational, and global context, as well as approaches of (sociological) peace and conflict research.

Jana Hönke

Jana’s current research examines how political geographies become transformed through South-South relations by studying the contested social and security arrangements around multinational companies and large-scale infrastructure projects in Africa.

Joël Glasman

Joël’s research focuses on the humanitarian government of the world, from a historical angle. Joël examines the apparatus of ideas, forms of expertise, and devices that shape contemporary humanitarianism.

Andrea Behrends

Humanitarian aid has been criticized for its close connection to military interventions or long-distance governance, particularly in global south contexts. With a focus on humanitarian practice, our project looks at actors, histories, and current situations of humanitarian aid, in relation to internal procedures and external critiques to decolonize aid.