People

Lotte Knote

Research Fellow

Phone: +49-(0)30-80307-148
Regional focus: East Africa, especially the Swahili coast of Kenya/Tanzania and the Western Indian Ocean

Positions

Since 01/2020
Research fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
Since 07/2018
Freelance translator and copy-editor
08/2018 - 01/2019
Research assistant at DFG project "Global health and the traditional medicine sector in Zanzibar", Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
07/2012 - 12/2014
Student assistant at Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin in the projects “Habitats and Habitus: Politics and Aesthetics of Religious Self-Making”, “Islam, Youth and Modernity in the Gambia: The Tablighi Jama’at” and “The Making of Entrepreneurs in a West African Muslim Trade Diaspora”
05/2010 - 12/2012
Student assistant at SFB 640, sub-project B2 “Political Representations in Transnational Spaces of African Modernity”, institute of African Studies, Humboldt-University Berlin

Degree/Education

Since 2019
PhD Student in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
2018
MA Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
2010
BA African Studies, Humboldt-University Berlin
2010
Swahili intensive course (07-09/2010) at the ‘Taasisi ya Kiswahili na Lugha za Kigeni”, State University of Zanzibar, Tanzania
2008/09
ERASMUS semester at SOAS, London, UK

Conference Presentations

09/2019: “We will be just a drop in the ocean: narratives of fear and the construction of a mega-port in Lamu Island, Kenya”, paper presented at the biannual DGSKA/GAA conference, panel “Feelings of In/Security: Felt Realities as the End of Negotiating in Open Societies? “, University of Konstanz, Germany

01/2018: "Facing change at the margins of the Kenyan nation – The promise of the Lamu port", paper presented at the conference “Governance and Islam in East Africa: Muslims and the State”, Aga Khan University, Nairobi, Kenya (publication forthcoming)

10/2017: “An anthropological becoming: methodological fears and hopes”, collaborative short film presentation at the biannual DGSKA/GAA-conference, panel “Experimenting with methods in critical affective research”, Freie Universität Berlin

Grants and Awards

2011
FU Berlin, MA research stipend of the institute of social and cultural anthropology
2011
FU Berlin, PROMOS scholarship for ethnographic fieldwork in Lamu, Kenya
2010
DAAD scholarship for Swahili intensive course, State University of Zanzibar

Memberships

  • German Anthropological Association
  • African Studies Association Germany
  • Bagamoyo Film Collective

Languages

  • German: native speaker (C2)
  • English: full fluency (C2)
  • Swahili: advanced intermediate level (B2)
  • French: intermediate level (B1)
  • Swedish: elementary level (A2)