Team > PD Dr. Jeannett Martin

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Anthropology

Scientific career

• 2018-19: Deputy Professorship "Ethnology of Africa", University of Bayreuth
  
• 2017-18: SScholarship holder for the completion of her habilitation thesis (funded by the Bavarian Programme for the Promotion of Equal Opportunity for Women in Research and Teaching 2017, Equal Opportunities Department), University of Bayreuth
  
• 2016-17: Research Fellow of the interdisciplinary research unit "Kinship and Politics. Rethinking a Conceptual Split and its Epistemic Implications in the Social Sciences" (Lead: Prof. Dr. E. Alber, Prof. Dr. David Sabean, Prof. Dr. Simon Teuscher, Prof. Dr. Tatjana Thelen), Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZIF), Bielefeld University
  
• 2015-16: Deputy Professorship of Social Anthropology (Prof. E. Alber), University of Bayreuth
  
• 2014-15: Postdoctoral researcher, deputy scientific assistant, Cultural & Social Anthropology research group, University of Bayreuth
  
• 2013: Postdoc (temporary position, funding year 3)
  
• 2012: Postdoctoral researcher, Cultural & Social Anthropology research group, University of Bayreuth
  
• 2011-12: Postdoctoral researcher (temporary position, funding year 2)
  
• 2010-11: Contributing to the coordination of Bayreuth Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS)
  
• 2009-10: Postdoctoral researcher (temporary position, funding year 1), DFG project "Child care in the context of ethnic heterogeneity (Borgu/ Republic of Benin)" incl. field research (ten months)
  
• 2007-09: Postdoctoral researcher, Bayreuth Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth
  
• 2005-06: Postdoctoral researcher, DFG-Project "Transformations in Social Parenthood in the north of the Republic of Benin"; Head: Prof. Dr. E. Alber, JP Ethnosociology, University of Bayreuth
  
• 2002-2005: Research associate, research project "Ritual, everyday life design and meaning in the modern world" (Project leader: Prof. Dr. Christoph Bochinger), Institute for the Study of Contemporary Religious Culture (IrG), University of Bayreuth
  
• 2004: Doctorate, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bayreuth (topic: "Between 'Been-To' and 'Burger' - On the Return of Ghanaian Educational Migrants from the Federal Republic of Germany", assessors: Prof. Dr. Gerd Spittler and Prof. Dr. Dieter Neubert
  
• 2001-02: Research associate, DFG project "The invisible religion in the visible religion" (Project leader: Prof. Dr. Christoph Bochinger), Institute for the Study of Contemporary Religious Culture (IrG), University of Bayreuth
  
• 1996-99: Doctoral studies, “Intercultural Relations in Africa” graduate school, University of Bayreuth
  

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Anthropology

Research interests

My social anthropological research interests lie in the areas of kinship, childhood and youth, politics, STS, migration, and contemporary religious culture.

In the context of my dissertation, I first dealt with the migratory experiences and reconstructions of Ghanaian educational migrants after their return from the Federal Republic of Germany. I was driven by the question of how educated Ghanaians who had returned to their country of origin reflect on this social process. I pursued this question with approaches from migration, social anthropological biography and narrative research. Based on the empirical data, I have developed a model of three historical generations of returnees, each of which is characterized by specific political and economic conditions for study and return as well as (gender-) specific experiences and ways of dealing with them (Martin 2004). 

After experiences in the context of multidisciplinary research on contemporary religious culture in Bavaria (Martin 2007), I worked for more than ten years on kinship practices and childhood related affiliation policies in West Africa. In doing so, I examined, first of all in comparison to the work of Erdmute Alber, the changing norms and practices of child care in a society (Fée) in northern Benin that lives mainly from agriculture (Martin 2007b, 2012).

Subsequently, I examined corresponding practices in the context of the complex inter-ethnic relations in the Borgu region under investigation. Based on the examination of the empirical data, I developed a theoretical conception of (childhood-related) belonging, which I understand as the process of creating significant social relationships with persons and we-groups. I see such processes primarily as an expression of individual and group-related policies that can be socially and historically variable. Specifically, I have investigated processes of creating belonging in and of children in cattle-breeding, Islamized Fulbe, in descendants of unfree (Gando), in a group of evangelical Fulbe, and in a Catholic orphanage in Borgu, Benin.

The regional focus of my current research interest is on my own society of origin. At the same time, however, it also deals with questions of kinship and childhood-related policies of belonging. The focus is on current debates about so-called cuckold children and the question of how paternity is interpreted and negotiated in Germany in times of increasing use of DNA-based parentage tests (so-called paternity tests).

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Anthropology

Publications

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Anthropology

PD Dr. Jeannett Martin
Social and Cultural Anthropology

University of Bayreuth
Universitätsstraße 30
​D-95447 Bayreuth

E-mail: jeannett.martin@uni-bayreuth.de
Homepage: Anthropology | Universität Bayreuth