معرفی
Peter Lambertz is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA) / KU Leuven, affiliated with the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. He holds a PhD in African Studies/Religious Studies (bi-national, Utrecht/Leipzig), an MA in Global Studies (Leipzig/Stellenbosch/Wroclaw), and a Licence en Histoire (ULB, Brussels). His career includes teaching History and Anthropology at the Philosophat Edith Stein in Kisangani (DRC), a visiting scholar role at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin (2016), and postdoctoral research with the transnational research group La Bureaucratisation des Sociétés Africaines in Dakar (2017–2018). He also held a Gerda Henkel Foundation postdoctoral position (2019–2020) while at Humboldt University's Institute of Asian and African Studies.
His research focuses on transport infrastructure, material culture, and socio-technical systems in DR Congo. Current projects study Congo’s wooden baleinières (whaleboats) and their socio-technical lives, including a collaborative venture to establish a river barge transportation network in Kisangani. Previous work explored Congolese followers of the Japanese religion Sekai Kyûseikyô and Dakar’s taxi logistics systems.
Key regional foci include DR Congo’s Tshopo Province, Kisangani, Kinshasa, and Dakar/Senegal. He has published on topics ranging from Congo Basin transportation networks to transnational religious practices, with recent contributions to Critical African Studies and Critical Research on Religion. His book Seekers and Things: Spiritual Movements and Aesthetic Difference in Kinshasa (2018) examines religious material culture in urban Kinshasa.
Grants include funding from the Gerda Henkel Foundation for his transportation venture project. Collaborative efforts with Congolese partners highlight his commitment to applied anthropological research.