Dr Annika Vosseler
Annika Vosseler completed her PhD in African Studies at the University of Leipzig in 2022 with a study on the visual representation of southern Africa in missionary journals entitled: "The visual representation of South Africa in European missionary images of the 19th and early 20th centuries".
Between 2013 and 2022, Ms Vosseler worked on various projects with African partners in which she investigated the visual representations of Africa as well as Protestant missionary societies. She was involved in setting up the online repository of the Hoffmann Collection of Cultural Knowledge (HC-CK). She was also part of the editorial process for the book The Hoffmann Collection of Cultural Knowledge by Annekie Joubert et al. 2015.
Since September 2021, Annika Vosseler has been working as a research assistant at the Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT. She is involved in the joint project "Precarious Provenance".
09.2021 –08.2024 | Research Associate | Joint Research Project: "Precarious Provenance – Human Remains from Africa's Colonial Heritage before 1919 in Scientific Collections of Baden-Württemberg", Museum der Universität Tübingen MUT |
2022 | Doctorate (Dr phil., African Studies) at the University of Leipzig, dissertation topic: "The visual representation of South Africa in European missionary images of the 19th and early 20th centuries" (Prof Dr Adam Jones, University of Leipzig; Prof Dr Lize Kriel, University of Pretoria, South Africa) |
2018–2021 | PhD scholarship of the Heinrich Böll Foundation |
2017–2021 | PhD student | Institute of African Studies and member of the Graduate School for Global and Area Studies (GSGAS), University of Leipzig |
2018 | Three-month research fellowship at the German Historical Institute London |
2017–2019 | Researcher | Project: “The Berlin Mission Archive as a repository of African knowledge“, Department of Visual Arts, University of Pretoria, South Africa |
2017 | Research Assistant | Project: B2 "Berlins Afrika" als Rahmen für afro-europäische Verflechtungsgeschichte und Raumordnungen, SFB 1199 Leipzig University; Research on the visualisation of the missionary work of the Berlin Mission in German East Africa, late 19th and early 20th century (Berlin's Africa as a Framework for Afro-European Interweaving History and Spatial Orders) |
2014–2015 | M.Sc. African Studies, University of Edinburgh; Thesis: "The Self and Other: How Lutheran Missionary Carl Hoffmann Represented Africa, 1894-1910"; Sam Shepperson Prize, University of Edinburgh |
2013–2014 | Student Assistant | Project: "Preservation of the Hoffmann Collection on the Cultural Heritage of the Northern Sotho", Seminar for African Studies, Humboldt University Berlin |
2012 | Three-month Northern Sotho language course (funded by the DAAD PROMOS programme), Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria, South Africa |
2010–2014 | B.A. Germanic Linguistics, minor subject: Area Studies Asia and Africa |
Publikationen
Review: Eliane Kurmann: Fotogeschichten und Geschichtsbilder. Aneignung und Umdeutung historischer Fotografien in Tansania. Frankfurt am Main 2023, in: Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists, 08.12.2023.
Gedenktafel für die Gefallenen des Krieges 1870/71, in: Ernst Seidl, Edgar Bierende, Michael La Corte (Hg.): Kunst an der Universität Tübingen (Schriften des Museums der Universität Tübingen MUT), Tübingen 2023, S. 206–207.
Zwei Gedenktafeln für die Gefallenen des Ersten Weltkriegs, in: Ernst Seidl, Edgar Bierende, Michael La Corte (Hg.): Kunst an der Universität Tübingen (Schriften des Museums der Universität Tübingen MUT), Tübingen 2023, S.236–237.
Gedenktafel für den 20. Juli 1944, in: Ernst Seidl, Edgar Bierende, Michael La Corte (Hg.): Kunst an der Universität Tübingen (Schriften des Museums der Universität Tübingen MUT), Tübingen 2023, S. 240–241.
Gedenktafel zum 40. Jahrestag des Kriegsendes, in: Ernst Seidl, Edgar Bierende, Michael La Corte (Hg.): Kunst an der Universität Tübingen (Schriften des Museums der Universität Tübingen MUT), Tübingen 2023, S. 242–243.
Podcast „Schlossgeflüster", Episode 6 from 12 April 2023, in conversation with Tatjana Dörrer: Woher und wohin? Provenienzforschung im kolonialen Kontext.
- Review: Sarah Thomas: Witnessing Slavery. Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition. New Haven 2019, in: Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists, 12.03.2021.
Vorträge
Annika Vosseler: “The long shadow of the colonial era - The joint project "Precarious Provenance" at MUT on human remains from Africa, Online lecture at the Speaker Network Provenance Research, 6 October 2023.
With Lucas Rau: “From Africa to Baden and Württemberg: How did human remains get into scientific collections during the colonial period?” Young Forum for Collection and Object Research "Die Wege der Objekte" (The Paths of Objects), Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum Bremerhaven, 28–30 September 2023.
- With Fabienne Huguenin: Poster presentation of the project “Precarious Provenance“, Annual conference for university collections 2022 "Brennpunkt Sammlung. Universitätssammlungen als Orte kritischer Auseinandersetzung" (Focus on collections. University collections as places of critical debate), University of Vienna, 6–8 October 2022.
- With Fabienne Huguenin: “Precarious provenance – human remains from Africa's colonial past before 1919 in scientific collections of Baden-Württemberg”, conference of the African Studies Association Germany (VAD) on: “Africa–Europe: reciprocal perspectives”, panel: "Human remains from Africa in German university collections. Sensitivity, co-production of knowledge and the restitution perspective", Freiburg im Breisgau, 9 June 2022.
- “The Difficulties of Finding Prephotographic Images in the Archives of the Berlin and London Missionary Societies”, digital conference “Archives of Print Culture in Southern Africa”, University of Pretoria and WITS University, 19 May 2022.
- “Verflochtene Geschichte. Materielle Zeugnisse von Mission und Kolonialismus” (Entangled history. Material evidence of mission and colonialism) joint discussion series of the Berliner Missionswerk and the Evangelische Akademie zu Berlin on a postcolonial culture of memory, Berlin, 9 May 2022.
- “Precarious Provenance – Human remains from Africa’s colonial past before 1919 in scientific collections of Baden-Württemberg”, digital at the State Volunteer Conference Karlsruhe 2022 Baden-Württemberg, 11 March 2022.
- Interview with Prof Dr Ernst Seidl, Dr Fabienne Huguenin and Annika Vosseler, conducted by students of the workshop "MUT zur Herkunft. Workshop zur Provenienzforschung für Jugendliche" (Workshop on Provenance Research for Young People)
- “Pictorial representations of the South African Christians of the nineteenth century”, XVIII Summer School of the Graduate School Global and Area Studies, “Social cohesion in a transregional and global perspective”, Universität Leipzig, 21–24 September 2020.
- “Drawing landscapes: How European missionary societies depicted southern Africa, 1850s-1890s”, Professur für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, University of Regensburg, 5 June 2019.
- „Hoffmann’s encounter with South African nature and mission stations“, Workshop: Conceptualising and configuring outputs on (the Berlin) Mission and African Knowledge as part of the research project „The Berlin Mission Archive as a repository of African knowledge“, Department of Visual Arts, University of Pretoria, Südafrika, January 2019.
- „The visualisation of the missionary encounter in Berlin’s Africa, 1880s–1930s“, XVI Summer School of the Graduate School Global and Area Studies, Imaginations, Constructions and Staging of Space in Global Processes, Universität Leipzig, June 2018.
- „The visual representation of Africa in drawings of the Berlin and London missionaries in the 19th and early 20th centuries“, Stipendiatenkolloquium, Deutsches Historisches Institut London, London, February 2018.
- „The visual representation of Africa in European missionary drawings in the 19th and early 20th centuries“, Workshop African History and Cuture, Universität Leipzig, May 2017.
- „The Self and Other: How the Lutheran missionary Carl Hoffmann represented Africa, 1894 – 1910“und „The Hoffmann-Collection of Cultural Knowledge and its visual archive“, Workshop „Ethnographic media and African knowledge in the early twentieth century: Contextualising and interpreting The Hoffmann Collection of Cultural Knowledge“am Department of Visual Arts, University of Pretoria, Südafrika, 26–28 January 2017.
- „Eine Analyse des Achterveld ǀXam Korpus von Wilhelm Bleek, 1866“,Linguistisches Kolloquium am Seminar für Afrikawissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, November 2013.