Wolbert GC Smidt

Wolbert GC Smidt (born July 2, 1966 in Munich ) is a German university lecturer and author . He teaches history and cultural studies at Mekelle University and is an ethnohistorical field researcher at Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

Life

After attending school in St. Cloud near Paris , Smidt studied philosophy , international law and ethnology (at times also third world sociology , political science and history ) at the Free University of Berlin and the Université de Genève in Switzerland, as well as Ethiopian studies , political science and the history of Africa at the university Hamburg . His academic teachers there were in particular Karlfried Gründer , Klaus Christian Köhnke and Georg Elwert . He received his doctorate for his work on the history of science, Africa in the shadow of the Enlightenment, the image of Africa with Kant and Herder with Rainer Tetzlaff at the University of Hamburg.

Since 1995 he has worked for Karlfried Gründer at the Institute for the History of Philosophy and the Humanities at the Free University of Berlin. In 1999 he became a research assistant at the University of Hamburg, Ethiopian Studies, and Assistant Editor of the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica as well as a member of several research projects, with his own research in Eritrea and Ethiopia (especially in Tigray and on the Tigrinnya speakers or Habescha , Bilen , Oromo and smaller) ethnic splinter groups).

From 2004–2005 he worked on Rainer Tetzlaff's project in a multidisciplinary project on traditional and modern socio-cultural structures in Tigray and Eritrea, with one year of field research in Tigray (“spaces of peace”), followed by several guest lectureships, among others. a. in Mekelle in Tigray and as Professeur invité in Paris at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales . Since 2009 he has been working in Tigray on oral traditions in collaboration with the German Archaeological Institute and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. In 2010 he became Associate Professor for Ethnohistory at Mekelle University in Ethiopia and Chairman of the Social Science Research Council there (2010-11), in 2015 visiting professor in Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy, and in 2017 as “Overseas Fellow” visiting scholar at the Ethnographic Museum Osaka (Minpaku ), Japan (sabbatical), and 2018 visiting professor in Paris, again at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

Since then, initially adjunct associate professor and 2019 full professor (adjunct) at Mekelle University, and at the same time associate scientist at the Gotha Research Center at the University of Erfurt. For the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Department of Oriental Studies, he works on sociocultural practices and historiographical traditions in northern Ethiopia (since 2017, since 2019 as a post-doc).

He is married to the Japanese ethnologist Chikage Ôba-Smidt .

Scientific focus

Smidt works in particular on the history of ethnology, on the history and socio-cultural traditions and practices of traditional societies in Northeast Africa, as well as on legal ethnology, modern political history, the ethnology of conflicts and on oral literature and oral history transmission. In addition to several books and over one hundred essays, he has written several hundred lexicon and encyclopedia articles, often on the basis of otherwise unpublished research. He also works on regional history in Germany, including the prosopography of theologian families from the 16th century, the African diaspora since the 18th century and historical photography. He is editor or on the advisory board of several scientific journals and member of the French Research Center Addis Ababa (CFEE). Smidt also wrote numerous articles in the Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). As an associated scientist at the Gotha Research Center of the University of Erfurt, he is the German director of the ethnohistorical DFG-ANR project "Ethiomap", in cooperation with the French director Eloi Ficquet, a research on the territorial culture and history of the region and its focus on historical maps of Northeast Africa Rediscovery as an African cultural heritage.

Publications (selection)

Books

• Africa in the shadow of the Enlightenment, The Africa picture with Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried Herder . Bonn: Holos-Verlag 2000 (Critical Human Research, Interdisciplinary Studies, 4), ISBN 3-86097-345-2 .

as co-editor and assistant editor

• Siegbert Uhlig (Editor) / Dirk Bustorf - Andreu Martínez d'Alòs-Moner - Denis Nosnitsin - Thomas Rave - Wolbert Smidt - Evgenia Sokolinskaia (Assistant Editors): Encyclopaedia Aethiopica , vol. 1 (AC). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2003, 846 pp .; ibid., vol. 2 (D-Ha). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2005, 1082 pp .; ibid., vol. 3 (He-N), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2007, 1211 pp .; ibid., vol. 4 (OX), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2010, 1199 pp. ( ISBN 978-3-447-06246-6 ).

• Abdulkader Saleh, Nicole Hirt, Wolbert GC Smidt and Rainer Tetzlaff (eds.): Peace spaces in Eritrea and Tigray under pressure, identity construction, social cohesion and political stability , Münster: Lit-Verlag 2008, 384 pp. (African Studies 39), ISBN 978-3-8258-1858-6 .

• Wolbert GC Smidt - Kinfe Abraham (eds.): Discussing Conflict in Ethiopia, Conflict Management and Resolution. Proceedings of the Conference "Ethiopian and German Contributions to Conflict Management and Resolution", Addis Ababa November 11-12, 2005 , Münster: Lit-Verlag 2007 (African Studies 32), 290 pp.

• Steffen Wenig (ed. In collaboration with Wolbert Smidt, Kerstin Volker-Saad and Burkhard Vogt): On imperial order: The German Aksum Expedition 1906 under Enno Littmann , vol. 1: The actors and the scientific studies of the DAE in Eritrea , Aichwald: Verlag Lindensoft 2006 (Research on the archeology of non-European cultures [FAAK], Volume 3.1).

• Verena Böll - Denis Nosnitsin - Thomas Rave - Wolbert Smidt - Evgenia Sokolinskaia (Ed.): Studia Aethiopica In Honor of Siegbert Uhlig on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2004.

Web links

• Wolbert Smidt's homepage with publications
• Literature by and about Wolbert GC Smidt in the catalog of the German National Library