Professor and Head of Research Group Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/S., Germany. 20 years of experience preparing expert reports concerning the issues mentioned under “Expertise: Areas of expertise”.
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/S., Germany
Qualifications: MA, PhD, Habilitation
Consultant, expert, advisor for, e.g. (MPs of) German Parliament, Pro Asyl, International Refugee Rights Initiative/Rights in Exile Programme, Refugee Council North Rhine-Westphalia, Network Migration in Europe, various national and international human rights organizations representing refugees and asylum seekers in Europe and the USA.
Areas of expertise: social, political and cultural beliefs, norms, and practices related to kin and gender relations, ethnic identity, religion, initiation (Female Genital Cutting/Mutilation, FGC/M), secret society membership, and land ownership; customary versus statutory law; trafficking (child trafficking, sexual trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage); attitudes towards and treatment of physically and mentally impaired individuals; medical infrastructures and availability/accessibility of medical/psychiatric treatment/therapy/medication; socio-economic country conditions and risks of social destitution; societal and political persecution; attitudes towards and treatment of homosexual and transsexual individuals, homo- and transphobia; attitudes towards and treatment of failed remigrants/returnees.
See Expertise; also 20 years’ experience preparing expert reports for law firms, (IN)GOs concerning issues mentioned under “Expertise: Areas of expertise”; served as expert witness in court proceedings.
(selection)
Books and edited volumes
Politics and Policies in Contemporary Upper Guinea Coast Societies: Change and Continuity (co-edited with C. K. Højbjerg and W. P. Murphy). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective (co-edited with C. Kohl). Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2016. (Open Access)
Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2014 (hardcover), 2018 (paperback).
The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast (co- edited with Wilson Trajano Filho). Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Childhood and Migration. From Experience to Agency (editor). Bielefeld and Somerset, N.J.: Transcript and Transaction Publishers, 2005.
Women and Migration: Anthropological Perspectives. (co-edited with B. Meier). Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus Verlag and St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
Articles and book chapters
Global and local models of governance in interaction: Configurations of power in Upper Guinea Coast societies (with C. K. Højbjerg and A. Schroven). Journal for Contemporary African Studies, 37, 1-57-71, 2019.
Creolization and pidginization as identity-related concepts of language, culture and identity. In: Knörr, J. and W. Trajano Filho (eds.) Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity: language, culture, identity, pp. 15-35. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
A war and after: Sierra Leone reconnects, within itself and with the world. In: Hannerz, U. and A. Gingrich (eds.) Small Countries. Structures and sensibilities, pp. 250-264. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
Deconstructing tropes of politics and policies in Upper Guinea Coast societies (with C. K. Højbjerg and W. P. Murphy). In: Højbjerg, C. K., Knörr, J. and W. P. Murphy (eds.) Politics and Policies in Contemporary Upper Guinea Coast Societies: Change and Continuity, pp. 1-26. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Female Genital Cutting in context: The example of Sierra Leone. The Expert Witness 16, 2016: 36-42.
The Upper Guinea Coast in global perspective (with C. Kohl) (2016). In: Knörr, J. and C. Kohl (eds.) The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective, pp. 1-18. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.
Einheit in Vielfalt? Zum Verhältnis ethnischer und nationaler Identität in Indonesien. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (APuZ) 11-12, 2012: 16-23.
Childhood and migration in the context of globalization. In: Ritzer, G. (ed.) (2012) Wiley- Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, pp. 177-179. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
National, ethnic and creole identities in contemporary Upper Guinea Coast societies (Knörr et al.). MPI for Social Anthropology Working Paper 135, 2012.
Das Coming-out der Diaspora als Heimat? Kreolische Identität in Sierra Leones Nachkriegsgesellschaft Sierra Leones. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 136, 2011: 331-356.
Contemporary creoleness, or: The world in pidginization? Current Anthropology, Vol. 51, No. 6, December 2010: 731-759.
Introduction (with Trajano Filho). In: Knörr, J. and W. Trajano Filho (eds.) (2010) The Powerful Presence of the Past. Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, pp. 1-23. Leiden: Brill.
Out of hiding? Strategies of empowering the past in the reconstruction of Krio identity. In: Knörr, J. and W. Trajano Filho (eds.) (2010) The Powerful Presence of the Past. Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast, pp. 205-228. Leiden: Brill.
Creolization and nation-building in Indonesia. In: Cohen, R. and P. Tonninato (eds.) (2009) The Creolization Reader. Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures, pp. 353-363. London: Routledge.
‘Free the Dragon’ versus ‘Becoming Betawi’. Chinese identity in contemporary Jakarta. Asian Ethnicity 10 (1), 2009: 71-90.
Towards a more comprehensive and comparative approach in the study of migrant children. In: Report of the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Changing Childhood in a Changing Europe, European Science Foundation, February 2009, pp. 23-28.
Indigenisierung vs. Re-Ethnisierung. Chinesische Identität in Jakarta. Anthropos 1, 2008: 159-177.
Creole identity and postcolonial nation-building. Examples from Indonesia and Sierra Leone, Série Antropologia, No. 416, Departamento Antropologia, Universidade Brasília, Brasília 2007.
Introduction, in: Knörr, J. (ed.) (2005) Childhood and Migration, pp. 9-21. Bielefeld and Somer-set, N.J.: Transcript and Transaction Publishers.
When German children come ‘home’: Experiences of (re-)migration to Germany – and some remarks about the ‘TCK’-issue, in: Knörr, J. (ed.) (2005) Childhood and Migration. From Experience to Agency, pp. 51-66. Bielefeld and Somerset, N.J.: Transcript and Transaction Publishers.
Freetown, in: Ember, M. and C. R. Ember (eds.) (2002) Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures. Cities and Cultures around the World, pp. 212-219. Danbury: Grolier: Vol. II.
Im Spannungsfeld von Traditionalität und Modernität: Die Orang Betawi und Betawi-ness in Jakarta, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 128, 2002, 2: 203-221.
Women and migration: Anthropological perspectives (with B. Meier), in: Knörr, J. and B. Meier (eds.) (2000): Women and Migration: Anthropological Perspectives, pp. 9-17. Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus and St. Martin’s Press.
Female secret societies and their impact on ethnic and transethnic identities among migrant women in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in: Knörr, J. and B. Meier (eds.) (2000): Women and Migration: Anthropological Perspectives, pp. 62-80. Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus and St. Martin’s Press.
Definitionen und Erklärungsansätze von Prostitution (with Holter, U. and E. Heinser-Ueckert), in: Holter, U. (ed.) (1995) Bezahlt, geliebt, verstoßen. Prostitution und andere Sonderformen institutionalisierter Sexualität in verschiedenen Kulturen, pp. 9-16. Bonn: Holos.