Michael Stasik
مدرس · Migration
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversityمعرفی
Dr. Michael Stasik is a lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel, where he teaches and conducts research at the intersection of cultures, economies, and mobilities in West Africa. His academic career includes previous positions as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and as a lecturer at the University of Bayreuth.
His educational background includes:
- MPhil from the African Studies Centre Leiden
- PhD from the University of Bayreuth
Dr. Stasik's research primarily focuses on migration, mobility, infrastructure, kinship, affect and imagination, with a regional specialization in West Africa. His work explores the urban-bound mobility of younger generations of West African migrants and how increasingly individualized movement and livelihoods refashion familial and affective attachments. His current project shifts to rural stayers, especially older adults, examining how intensifying outmigration impacts kinship relationship across generations. His research also investigates the significance of absence, detachment and loneliness in the lives of both migrants and those who stay put.
His publications demonstrate a strong focus on West African urban spaces, migration patterns, and the social implications of mobility. His work spans ethnographic studies of bus stations in Ghana, explorations of popular music audiences in Sierra Leone, and analyses of infrastructural practices amid rapid transformations driven by global market forces and urban policies.
Dr. Stasik has received several prestigious awards:
- Young Scholars' Award of the African Studies Association in Germany
- Dissertation Award of the University of Bayreuth
- ASC's Africa Thesis Award
- Senior fellow at the Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa at the University of Ghana
He currently serves as editor of the Basel Anthropology Papers and is a member of the editorial team of New Diversities. His work has been published in journals such as Africa, Ethnography, Ethnos and JRAI, and he has co-edited special journal issues on Temporalities of Waiting in Africa and Bus Stations in Africa, as well as the volume The Making of the African Road.
Dr. Stasik's research is conducted through the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel, which focuses on intimacy, gender, sexuality, and kinship; mobility, belonging, and citizenship; medical anthropology; objects, memory, and materiality; and the politics of anthropological knowledge production.
