Ove SutterView profile
Professor
- Civil society engagement and political activism
- Political-economic development of rural areas
- Everyday storytelling and political narratives
- +2 more
Ove Sutter is Professor of Empirical Cultural Studies and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bonn, where he heads the department and several academic programs. His career includes positions at the University of Hamburg and University of Vienna. He was on parental leave during 2021-2023 and currently co-directs the BMEL-funded project Actor networks and multifunctional spaces for art, culture and creative work in rural regions (AMuRaKK) (2022-2026). Sutter's research examines civil society engagement, rural development, political narratives, social movements, and labor precarization. His interdisciplinary approach combines cultural anthropology with political economy, focusing on how neoliberal transformations reshape everyday practices and grassroots responses. His scholarly publications demonstrate consistent engagement with themes of power asymmetry, participatory governance, and humanitarian activism. Recent work analyzes refugee assistance as vernacular humanitarianism, EU rural development programs as sites of cultural negotiation, and creative protest tactics in urban spaces. Methodologically, he employs ethnographic fieldwork combined with critical discourse analysis. No scientific awards are mentioned in the source material. He currently leads research projects on digital archiving of folklore collections (DigErAdV) and socio-ecological water metabolisms in post-industrial landscapes. As department head, he oversees the Master's program in Transcultural Studies and maintains collaborations with the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies.







