FAU-Professor Schultz gives lecture in Ghana

On 4 February, 2025, Ulrike Schultz, Professor of Development Sociology at the FAU, hold a public lecture at the University of Ghana.  The lecture took place as part of her 5-month research fellowship at the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies Africa (MIASA). In the lecture titled “Beyond categories: Self-categorization of people on the move in the Sudans”, Ulrike Schultz  scrutinized how people originating from the Southern part of Sudan are labeled and categorized in the processes following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005) and the secession of South Sudan (2011). Based on a multisided ethnography over a long period in Sudan and South Sudan, she reflected on the life of a family and showed how they negotiate the categorization of the migration regime and try to create meaningful lives beyond categories. During the fellowship that started on November 1 and will end in March 3, Ulrike Schultz will work on book manuscript on her research in Sudan and South Sudan. She is represented in teaching at Friedensau Adventist University by Dr phil. Fränze Seidel.

The Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) is an international research centre at the University of Ghana in Legon, Accra. The institute promotes cooperation between Ghanaian academics and international colleagues across disciplinary and national borders. The overarching goal of MIASA is to increase the global visibility of research in the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies by researchers from sub-Saharan Africa. To achieve this goal, the research college awards scholarships to early career researchers and established academics working on the overarching topic of "Sustainable Governance".