More Biographical Data

2018 Winner of the Leo Spitzer Award 2018 at the University of Cologne

Since 2015 Associate Vice Rector for International Relations with the Global South of the University of Cologne

Since 2013 Vice Spokesperson for the Cologne Global South Studies Centre

2011-2015 Vice Rector for International Relations, Academic Career and Diversity of the University of Cologne

2009/2012/2015 Three months fieldwork in Namibia on social dynamics and conservation

Since 2010 Speaker of the FOR 1501 Resilience, Collapse and Reorganisation in the Savannahs of Eastern and Southern Africa.

Since 2009 Director of the Cologne African Studies Centre.

2009 W3 professorship offered at Hamburg (declined).

2004 - 2005 Nine months field work in Namibia on environmental history.

2003 Participation in founding workshop for SAVI initiative (Southern African Vulnerability Initiative) in Maputo.

2001 C4 professorship offered at Halle (declined).

Since 2000 Professor for Anthropology at the University of Cologne and Speaker for the Interdisciplinary Programme Arid Climate and Cultural Evolution in Arid Africa (ACACIA); the programme includes several doctoral studies on resource management in southern Africa’s communal areas.

1999 Habilitation in Anthropology at the Faculty of Fine Arts (Philosophische Fakultät); University of Cologne; Thesis Title: "Living in a Hazardous World – Risk management in two pastoral societies; Pokot NW Kenya and Himba NW Namibia".

1992 - 1999 Associate Professor for Anthropology at the University of Cologne.

1991 PhD Thesis "Warriors of the Yellow Guns. Intra- and interethnic conflict management among the Pokot of Kenya" in Tübingen.

1987 - 1989 Two years fieldwork with the pastoral Pokot of Kenya.

1986 - 1991 Member of a research project on "Violence and War in Third World Countries" in Tübingen.

1986 MA on Social Networks among Slum Dwellers in Karatina, Central Kenya.

1983 - 1986 Studies of Anthropology, History and African Studies at Cologne.

1981 - 1983 Studies of Anthropology, History and Rural Sociology at Bonn.

Academic Memberships

2019-2021 Member of the German Committee Future Earth (DKN)

2010-2012 Executive Director of the Society of Africa-related Sciences in Germany (Vereinigung der Afrikawissenschaften Deutschlands).

2008-2010 Referee (Fachkollegiat) for Anthropology with the German Research Council.

2004 - 2008 Referee (Fachkollegiat) for Anthropology with the German Research Council.

Since 2003 Editorial Board of Human Ecology.

Thematic Interests and Regional Focus

Human-environment interaction, political ecology, environmental history, transition of local knowledge, conflict.

Southern and Eastern Africa.

Books

Bollig, Michael with Clemens Greiner & Steven van Wolputte (eds.)
2022 African Futures. Vol. 27, Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies. Leiden: Brill.Open Access

Bollig, Michael
2020    Shaping the African Savannah: From Captialist Frontier to Arid Eden in Namibia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108764025

Gröne, Katharina; Braun, Boris; Kloß, Sinah:, Schüller, Martin; and Bollig, Michael (eds.)
2020   Fairer Handel. Chancen, Grenzen, Herausforderungen, 1st ed., München: Oekom Verlag.
https://www.oekom.de/buch/fairer-handel-9783962382155

Guest editors:Gänger, Stefanie and Bollig, Michael
2019: Environmental History, 24(4): Forum: Commodifying the “Wild”: Anxiety, Ecology and Au-thenticity in the Late Modern Era.
https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emz033

Guest editors: Bollig, Michael and Lesorogol, Carolyn
2016    International Journal of the Commons, Special Issue 10,2: Pastoralism and the New Commons. Co-Management, Conflict and Cooperation.

Guest editors: Bollig, Michael and Anderson, David M.
2016    Journal of Eastern African Studies, Special Issue 10,1: Resilience and Collapse in African Savannahs. Causes and Consequences of Environmental Change in East Africa.
 
Bollig, Michael; Schnegg, Michael; Wotzka, Hans-Peter (Hg.)
2013    Pastoralism in Africa. Past, Present and Future. New York: Berghahn.
 
Bollig, Michael; Bubenzer, Olaf (Hg.)
2009    African Landscapes. Interdisciplinary Approaches. (Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, Vol. 4). New York: Springer. Available as E-Book on SpringerLink, preview on books.google.com

Rao, Aparna; Bollig, Michael; Böck, Monika (Hg.)
2007    The Practice of War. Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence. New York: Berghahn. Available for download on payment (PayPal), preview on books.google.com

Bollig, Michael; Bubenzer, Olaf; Vogelsang, Ralf; Wotzka, Hans-Peter (Hg.)
2007    Aridity, Change and Conflict in Africa. Proceedings of an International ACACIA Conference held at Königswinter, Germany, October 1-3, 2003. (Colloquium Africanum 2). Köln: Heinrich Barth Institut.

Articles

van Dam, A., van Engelen, W., Müller-Mahn, D., Agha, S., Junglen, S., Borgemeister, C., & Bollig, M.
2023. Complexities of multispecies coexistence: Animal diseases and diverging modes of ordering at the wildlife–livestock interface in Southern Africa. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486231160637

2022 “Twenty-First Century Conservation in Africa: Contemporary Dilemmas, Future Challenges.” African Futures, edited by Michael Bollig et al., Brill, 2022, pp. 111–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv2kqwzjh.16. Accessed 28 Jun. 2022.

Michael Bollig with Kalvelage, Linus, Grawert Elke, Hulke Carolin, Meyer Maximilian, Mkutu Kennedy, Müller-Koné Marie, Diez Javier Revilla
2021 Territorialising Conservation: Community-based Approaches in Kenya and Namibia. Conservation and Society Volume: 19 | Issue Number: 4 | Page: 282-293

2021: Materiality, inequality, and future-making as focal points of future engagement of economic anthropology with climate change. Economic Anthropology 8:180-182.
https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12199

Michael Bollig & Hauke-Peter Vehrs
2021: The making of a conservation landscape: the emergence of a conservationist environmental infrastructure along the Kwando River in Namibia's Zambezi region. Africa 91(2):1-26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972021000061

Michael Bollig & Hauke-Peter Vehrs
2020: Abundant herds: Accumulation, herd management, and land-use patterns in a conservation area. Pastoralism Vol.10(20). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13570-020-00175-0

Linus Kalvelage, Javier Revilla Diez & Michael Bollig
2020: How much remains? Local value capture from tourism in Zambezi, Namibia. Tourism Geographies, pulb.online 29 Jun 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1786154

2019: The Anxieties, Thrills, and Gains of Rarity and Extinction: From Discourses on Remnant Fauna to the Globalized Protection and Marketing of Endangered Wildlife in Namibia’s “Arid Eden”, in S. Gänger & M. Bollig (eds). Forum: Commodifying the “Wild”. Environmental History, 24(4).

2018 Afterword: Anthropology, Climate Change and Social-Ecological Transformations. Sociologus 68:85-94. https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.68.1.85

Bollig, Michael and Greiner, Clemens
2018:  African Studies between Area Studies Tradition and Global Entanglement Approaches: Perspectives from The University of Cologne. African study monographs. Supplementary issue, 54, pp. 15-28.

2017: Interkulturelle Vergleichsverfahren. In: Beer, B., H. Fischer and J. Pauli (eds.) Ethnologie: Einführung in die Erforschung kultureller Vielfalt. Berlin: Reimer: 107-124.

2016: Towards an Arid Eden? Boundary-making, governance and benefit-sharing and the political ecology of the new commons of Kunene Region, Northern Namibia. In: International Journal of the Commons 10,2, pp. 771-799. http://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.702

2016: Adaptive cycles in the Savannah. Pastoral specialization and diversification in northern Kenya. In: Journal of Eastern African Studies 10,1 (Special Issue): 21-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2016.1141568

Anderson, David M.; Bollig, Michael
2016: Resilience and collapse. Histories, ecologies, conflicts and identities in the Baringo-Bogoria Basin, Kenya. In: Journal of Eastern African Studies 10,1 (Special Issue):  1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2016.1150240

Mathias Becker, Miguel Alvarez, Gereon Heller, Paul Leparmarai, Damaris Maina, Itambo Malombe, Michael Bollig, Hauke Vehrs
2016: Land-use changes and the invasion dynamics of shrubs in Baringo. In: Journal of Eastern African Studies 10,1 (Special Issue): 111-129. https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2016.1138664

Bollig, Michael; Olwage, Elsemi
2016: The Political Ecology of Hunting in Namibia’s Kaokoveld. From Dorsland Trekkers’ Elephant Hunts to Trophy-hunting in Contemporary Conservancies. In: Journal of Contemporary African Studies 34 (Issue 1: Hunting in Contempory Africa): 61-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2016.1182745

Linstädter, A.; Kuhn, A.; Naumann, C.; Rasch, S.; Sandhage-Hofmann, A.; Amelung, W.; Jordaan, J.; Du Preez, C. C.; Bollig, M.
2016: Assessing the resilience of a real-world social-ecological system. Lessons from a multidisciplinary evaluation of a South African pastoral system. In: Ecology and Society 21,3: 35. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08737-210335

Ming'ate, Felix Lamech Mogambi; Bollig, Michael
2016: Local Rules and Their Enforcement in the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve Co-Management Arrangement in Kenya. In: Journal of East African Natural History 105: 1-19. https://doi.org/10.2982/028.105.0102

Schnegg, Michael; Bollig, Michael
2016: Institutions put to the test. Community-based water management in Namibia during a drought. In: Journal of Arid Environments 124: 62-71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2015.07.009

Schnegg, Michael; Bollig, Michael; Linke, Theresa
2016: Moral equality and success of common-pool water governance in Namibia. In: Ambio 45,5: 581-590. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0766-9