Silke Oldenburg is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel. She works at the intersection of political, urban and environmental anthropology and has more than three years of research experience carrying out fieldwork in DR Congo and Columbia. Her research interests coalesce around diverse dimensions of urban life in the Global South addressing aspects such as displacement, political violence, infrastructure, and humour in research, writing and teaching.

Benedikt Pontzen is an anthropologist and writer. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin. In his research, he focuses on lived Islam, so-called ‘African Traditional Religions’, religious diversity, and religious encounters in West Africa. He is conversant in Asante Twi and has been carrying out ethnographic and historiographic research in Ghana’s Asante region since the early 2000s. He is the author of Islam in a Zongo: Muslim Lifeworlds in Asante, Ghana (Cambridge University Press, 2021; Ghanaian edition forthcoming).

Ngozika Anthonia Obi-Ani is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her research is multidisciplinary, connecting history, sociology, conflicts, health, gender studies, as well as urban, cultural, and memory studies. My overall research is thinking globally about gender equality, reducing inequalities, sustainable peace, justice, and the role of stronginstitutions in ensuring equality.

Dr. Chinasa Abonyi is a budding scholar in gender and environmental studies, specializing in eco-poetics and ecofeminist theorization of the environment and sustainability studies. Chinasa has attended many conferences and has published in both local and international journals including her 2022 article in AlterNative: Journal of Indigenous Peoples (SAGE). She is a lecturer in the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. Dr.

Seyram Agbleze is a Ghanaian artist and storyteller educated at Central University College. His art practice employs figurative collages inspired by traditional African textiles such as the Asafo flags and Kente.

Jean-Marcellin Manga holds a doctorate in political and social sciences from the University of Liege. He teaches at the Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Legal and Political Sciences of the University of Yaoundé II – (Cameroon).

MIASA project: Hegemonic Masculinities and the Digital Turn in Africa

Felix Schürmann is a historian specialised on maritime, global, and environmental aspects of African history as well as on human-animal relations under conditions of colonial rule and decolonization. Before his stay at MIASA he has worked as an interim professor for African History at the University of Hamburg and co-ordinated the research alliance "Mapping the Oceans: Towards a History of Globalisation as Seen from the Waters" at the University of Erfurt.

Erdmute Alber is professor of social anthropology at the University of Bayreuth. Her research focusses on processes of social change and the interdependencies and mutual entanglements of politics and kinship, primarily in West Africa. Her work is based on historically informed field research and empirical fieldwork. Current topics are women in politics, new illiteracies education, and aspirations of youth.