Kirsten Rüther

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Kirsten Rüther (* 1966 in Rendsburg / Schleswig-Holstein ) is a German historian and Africanist . Since 2012 she has held a professorship for African history and society at the University of Vienna .

Life

Kirsten Rüther spent her childhood with her parents and two younger siblings in Hohenwestedt , a municipality in the Rendsburg district. After graduating from high school, she worked in a bank for five years before embarking on a university career in 1990.

She studied history, English and religious studies at the University of Hanover . During her studies she “discovered Africa for herself” and here in particular South Africa , which was also the regional focus of the university. She did her PhD in history with a thesis on the history of missions and Christianization in South Africa.

Rüther was a research assistant at various universities. Among others at the University of Hamburg in the Collaborative Research Center "Upheaval and Coping in African Societies", at the historical seminar of the Leibniz University Hannover and at the University of Zurich . In 2007 Kirsten Rüther qualified as a professor and received the venia legendi (teaching license) for modern history Visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin.Since October 2012 she has been Professor of African History and Society at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Vienna.

research

Kirsten Rüther is involved in AEGIS (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies) through the Institute for African Studies at the University of Vienna. AEGIS is a research network of European centers for African studies founded in 1991 with the aim of creating synergies between experts and institutions. The main goal of AEGIS is to improve understanding of today's African societies.

Focus

  • Conversion and Christianization in the context of mission and colonialism
  • Health, Medicine and Popular Culture in South Africa
  • Professionalization of African healers
  • Global historical dimensions of African history, 15. – 19. Century
  • Housing construction in late colonial Zambia
  • Family and Kinship in African Societies
  • Life history research

Projects

In 2005, Rüther was a Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Studies in Essen and was involved in the project: Encyclopedia of the Modern Age (specialist editor "Global Interaction").

Numerous research trips have taken her to Johannesburg , Durban , Pietermaritzburg in South Africa and Oxford / Great Britain, among others .

Since 2017 she has been working with three other people on the housing project at the University of Vienna. This concerns housing construction in Zambia , Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo . The question of how people live and have lived in medium-sized provincial cities and how everyday perspectives on political events are to be directed from the living space is examined. The book on the project was published in May 2020: The Politics of Housing in (Post-) Colonial Africa: Accommodating workers and urban residents.

Together with Peter Delius ( University of the Witwatersrand , Johannesburg), Kirsten Rüther is working on a research project on the "History of the Winter Family", the eventful history of a family in South Africa descended from missionaries.

She is also head of the interdisciplinary research platform "Mobile Cultures and Societies", which is run jointly by the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna. The aim is to investigate the phenomena and conditions of cultural and social mobility.

Publications

Independent works

  • The Power Beyond: Mission Strategies, African Conversion and the Development of a Christian Culture in the Transvaal . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-8258-4773-9 . (Also: University of Hanover, Diss., 2001)
  • with Angelika Schaser, Jacqueline Van Gent: Gender and Conversion Narratives in the Nineteenth Century: German Mission at Home and Abroad . Ashgate, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-4724-4923-8 .
  • A closer look at Africa: Perspectives from a continent in transition . Edition Konturen, Vienna, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-902968-24-1 .
  • with Martina Barker-Ciganikova, Daniela Waldburger and Carl-Philipp Bodenstein: The Politics of Housing in (Post-) Colonial Africa: Accommodating workers and urban residents . De Gruyter, Oldenburg 2020, ISBN 978-3-11-059827-8 .

Articles in compilations (selection)

  • Specialized editor for Global Interaction. In: Friedrich Jaeger on behalf of the Institute for Cultural Studies (Essen) and in conjunction with the specialist editors (ed.): Encyclopedia of Modern Times in 16 volumes. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2005–2012, ISBN 978-3-476-01935-6 .
  • African Converts in the 19th Century: Relationships, Families and Kinship Dynamics in the Transvaal and the Zulu Empire . In: Jobst Reller (Hrsg.): Women and Times: Women in the Hermannsburg Mission and their partner churches in the 20th century . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-12501-9 , pp. 73-88 .
  • The dispute about English as a subject in Lutheran mission schools in South Africa . In: Rebekka Habermas, Richard Hölzl (ed.): Mission global: An entanglement history since the 19th century . Böhlau, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22203-1 , p. 91-110 .
  • City and structures of the mobile in (post) colonial Africa . In: Brigitta Schmidt-Lauber (Hrsg.): Other urbanities: on the plurality of the urban . Böhlau Wien, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-20685-9 , pp. 61-76 .
  • Is there anything new? Commentary on the new mission story . In: Linda Ratschiller, Karolin Wetjen (ed.): Entangled Mission: Perspectives on a New Mission History . Böhlau Wien, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2018, ISBN 978-3-412-50937-8 , pp. 225-237 .
  • Power and sea and God in early modern West and West Central Africa. Conversions to Catholicism in the Early Modern Period: European and Global Perspectives. In: Wolfgang Behringer, Eric-Oliver Mader, Justus Nipperdey (eds.): Cultural foundations of Europe . tape 5 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-643-13981-8 , pp. 267-280 .

Articles in journals (selection)

  • with Peter Delius: Family history at the Mosego mission station, the Mecklenburg farm and in the city of Pietersburg (South Africa): dividing lines and their relocation since 1880 . In: Historical Anthropology . No. 22.1 , 2014, p. 91-113 .
  • with Daniela Waldburger: Sojourns Along the Way - Narrative Perspectives of Movement, Mobility and Moments in Between . In: Samples: Vienna Journal of African Studies . No. 28 , 2015, p. 1-9 .
  • Approaches to Mission History: The Plea for an Actor-Centered History of Religious Change . In: Journal for Mission Studies and Religious Studies . tape 100 , 2016, p. 210-218 .
  • with Stephan Bierling: Mandela .... read a book . In: Samples: Viennese Journal for Critical African Studies . tape 36 , 2019, p. 151 .
  • Asking Appropriate Questions, Reconsidering Research Agendas: Moving between London and Lusaka, in- and outside the Archive . In: Administory. Administrative History Journal . tape 4 , 2019, p. 110-124 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Bayerischer Rundfunk: alpha forum: Kirsten Rüther in conversation with Isabella Schmid. September 27, 2017, accessed June 23, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Univ.-Prof. Dr. Kirsten Rüther. Institute homepage of the University of Vienna, accessed on June 23, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b A network in excellence | AEGIS - African studies in Europe. AEGIS homepage, accessed on June 23, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Third-party funded projects of the Institute for African Studies. Institute homepage of the University of Vienna, accessed on August 19, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Annual report 2017 of the Institute for African Studies at the University of Vienna, page 32. Institute website of the University of Vienna, accessed on July 26, 2020 .
  6. ^ Mobile Cultures and Societies. Institute homepage of the University of Vienna, accessed on July 26, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Rüther, Kirsten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and Africanist
DATE OF BIRTH 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Rendsburg , Schleswig-Holstein