Heike Becker is a social and cultural anthropologist and has been publishing widely, mostly on southern Africa (Namibia and South Africa). She has been teaching at the University of the Western Cape since 2001, and is currently the Head of UWC’s Anthropology department. She teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Anthropology Theory & Methods, Writing Difference, Popular Culture in the Contemporary World and Cultures of Capitalism. She is also a PI of the International Research and Training Group ‘Transformative Religion : Religion as situated knowledge in processes of social transformation’ and supervise 5 IRTG fellows pursuing doctoral degrees at UWC, the University of Kwazulu-Natal (South Africa), and Humboldt University Berlin (Germany).

She is the author of Namibian Women’s Movement 1980 to 1992. From Anticolonial Struggle to Reconstruction, editor and co-editor of a number of edited collections and special issues. She has published widely on topics at the interface between culture and politics, including gender, popular culture, and performance. Her recent research has focused on politics of memory, decolonization, and social movements in southern Africa (South Africa and Namibia) and in Germany (recently : 2022 ; “Youth speaking truth to power” : intersectional decolonial activism in Namibia), on the history and decolonization of South African Anthropology (forthcoming ; 2023 : ‘Because Rhodes fell’. Historical development, institutional contexts, and the challenges of decolonisation of South African anthropology).

Heike Becker is currently directing a research project ‘Decolonizing the Public Space in Germany and its Former African Colonies” with three focus areas :
– Civic action and the urban public space (with special emphasis to memorial sites and the naming of streets) ;
– Museums as spaces of representation and battlegrounds over decolonization ;
– The visual and performing arts as spaces, in which the meanings of remembrance are being negotiated through aesthetics and the senses.

Statut/institution : Professeure, directrice du Département d’Anthropologie de University of the Western Cape

Référente IMAF : Agnes Kedzierska - Manzon
Dates du séjour : du 1er au 31 octobre 2023
Contact : hbecker@uwc.ac.za

CONFÉRENCES :

– 12 octobre 9h30 - 13h :
"Le séminaire de l’IMAF - Campus Condorcet" : salle 3.122, bâtiment recherche Sud, Aubervilliers

• Ruptures and continuities of struggle : Social movements, gender, and decolonization in Namibia, 1980s-2020s

– 20 octobre, 10h-13h :
Workshop RE-IMAGINING AFRICA : PAST IN THE PRESENT, IMAF, Campus Condorcet, Bât. de Recherche Sud, salle 3.122

• ‘Ounona’ - Dolls and ancestral voices in the art work of Tuli Mekondjo : Reimagining African gender and spirituality

– 18 octobre 14h-17h :
Séminaire EPHE "Corps rituels", FMSH, 54 bd Raspail, sous-sol, salle 15

• "An Ethnography of Women’s Initiation in Northern Namibia : Embodiment, Practice, Christianity, and Heritage"

– 26 octobre (12h30-14h30) :
Séminaire "Dynamiques du genre en Afrique" : Campus Condorcet-Centre de colloques, salle 3.08, place du Front populaire, Aubervilliers
(Titre non encore communiqué)