Mobility Regimes of Pandemic Preparedness and Response: The Case of Covid-19 (MoRePPaR)

This project explores, from a decolonial perspective, the impact of COVID-19-related mobility regimes on people's lives and their affective embodiments beyond acute pandemic situations in South Africa, Germany, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Korea.

• Mobility Regimes of Pandemic Preparedness and Response

Mastering Infections: An ethnography of traveling capacity building on infection prevention and control (IPC) in Guinea and Ivory Coast

My research examines the capacity building activities on Infection, Prevention and Control (IPC) embedded in a partnership between the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, Germany and two state hospitals in Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea. I propose a multi-sited, multi-species ethnography to locate the more-than-human trajectories that (re)create the hospital space and are at the same time part of the partnership strategies.

• Mastering Infections: An ethnography of traveling capacity building on infection prevention and control (IPC) in Guinea and Ivory Coast

Networking with Viruses: A Multispecies Ethnography of Zoonotic Viral Pathogen Circulation in The Gambia

This PhD Project aims to provide an in-depth understanding of local interactions among more-than-human communities within their respective environments. Furthermore, it seeks to expand anthropological knowledge of zoonotic infection dynamics among rural communities in The Gambia For this reason, my research employs a spatio-temporal and multi-sited ethnographic approach with three main objectives.

• Networking with Viruses: A Multispecies Ethnography of Zoonotic Viral Pathogen Circulation in The Gambia

Post-Pandemic Border Regime between China and Myanmar: COVID-19 and its Lingering Impacts on a Border City in Yunnan, China

Centering my fieldwork in Ruili, Yunnan, the largest land port between China and Myanmar—once characterized by significant cross-border mobilities prior to the pandemic—my ethnographic research seeks to illuminate how the border in this region has shifted from a porous space to a heavily fortified one.

• Post-Pandemic Border Regime between China and Myanmar: COVID-19 and its Lingering Impacts on a Border City in Yunnan, China

Making Sense through the Device: Implantees’ Habituation of Cochlear Implants in China (Working Title)

Drawing on disability studies, STS and critical medical anthropology, this PhD research explores the implementation and adoption of the CI in China, an assistive technology widely used for deaf people to restore partial sense of hearing.

• Making Sense through the Device: Implantees’ Habituation of Cochlear Implants in China (Working Title)

PrEPped Intimacies in / from Berlin

This research project explores how PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis), a medication that prevents HIV infection, is reshaping lives, relationships, and ideas about sexuality. It examines the hopes and concerns people attach to the drug, especially in communities historically affected by HIV/AIDS. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Germany and Colombia, it asks how PrEP is experienced locally—and how it circulates globally—through public health, queer art, and activism.

• PrEPped Intimacies in / from Berlin

Sex/Work, Migration and Eastern Europe in Berlin

This ethnographic research project analyses how negotiations of embodied (Eastern) European (non)belongings affect the everyday (work) lives of people from Eastern Europe who are engaged in sex work in Berlin.

• Sex/Work, Migration and Eastern Europe in Berlin

African Medical Migration

This project is going to build upon the current state of research on the migration of African medical doctors by paying close attention to the research areas of: 1) skilled migration, 2) biomedicine in and from Africa and 3) transnational networks. It will explore from an emic perspective the migration experiences of Nigerian medical doctors in the USA.

• African Medical Migration

Transnational Health Care

This ethnographic project examines expectations and experiences of highly-skilled migrants from Germany, India and Japan with US health care and health insurance, focusing on transnational health care seeking strategies on navigating biomedical differences and difficulties while integrating into the US medical system.

• Transnational Health Care

People with Albinism in Tanzania

The present ethnographic research intends to analyze life situations, everyday experiences, and subjectivity of people with albinism in Tanzania.

• People with Albinism in Tanzania

Learning the Ways of the Heart in Berlin

Sufism is known as a way of the heart (German: Weg des Herzens) among other names that it can be given. What is Sufism? How is Sufism practiced and experienced in a post-secular cityscape? Guided by these questions I conducted fieldwork with three Sufi networks in Berlin and connected sites in between 2013 and 2015.

• Learning the Ways of the Heart in Berlin

Male Sexual Dysfunction in Tanzania

My ethnographic project aims at understanding the perceptions and practices of young men experiencing sexual performance concerns, particularly dysfunctions, in urban Tanzania.

• Male Sexual Dysfunction in Tanzania

Surrogacy in transnational perspective

This project investigates transnational surrogacy with a particular focus on the experiences of intended parents.

• Surrogacy in transnational perspective

Archive

• Antiretroviral Therapy in Tanzania
• Traditional medicine and the biomedical health care sector on Zanzibar
• Masculinities and AIDS in South Africa
• Bioprospecting in South Africa
• Living with Chronic Disease: Turkish Migrants in Germany
• Emerging Infections
• Refusal of Blood Transfusions