Universität KonstanzExzellenzcluster „Kulturelle Grundlagen von Integration“

Rijk van Dijk First Guest Professor of Ethnology at the University of Konstanz

7. May 2013

Rijk van Dijk, senior researcher at the African Studies Centre in Leiden (Netherlands), took up his position as guest professor of ethnology at the beginning of this year’s summer semester.

Update: As of May 2013, he is appointed Professor at the University of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam International School of Social Science Research, in a new Chair entitled the study of Religion and Sexuality in Africa.

Van Dijk is one of the world's most renowned ethnologists in the field of religion in Africa. He is an expert on Pentecostalism, globalization, migration, and AIDS on the African continent. Moreover, he chairs the International Research Network on AIDS and Religion in Africa (IRNARA) and is editor-in-chief of “African Diaspora. A Journal of Transnational Africa in a Global World.”

While staying at the University of Konstanz van Dijk is doing research on “The Social Life of Responsibilization: Marriage as a ‘Life-Project’ in Botswana.” This research topic is part of the joint project “Ethics of Responsibility”, in which he cooperates with Konstanz based anthropologist Thomas G. Kirsch and Astrid Bochow (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/S.), both presently fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study Konstanz.

The guest professorship of ethnology has been established at the University of Konstanz with the beginning of the Center's second funding period.
This position, which is assigned for the period of a year, will further strengthen the new emphasis on cultural anthropology both in terms of research and teaching at Konstanz in an international context.