Katja Werthmann

Katja Werthmann
Prof. Dr. Katja Werthmann, 2019
Born (1964-05-11) May 11, 1964 (age 62)
Freiburg im Breisgau, West Germany
OccupationUniversity professor
TitleProf. Dr.
Academic background
Education
Academic work
Discipline
Institutions

Katja Werthmann (born 1964 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany) is a German social and cultural anthropologist whose regional research focus is West Africa. She is Professor of Society, Politics and Economy of Africa at Leipzig University.

Academic career

Werthmann studied European Cultural Anthropology, Historical Anthropology, and African Linguistics at Goethe University Frankfurt, graduating with a Magister Artium (M.A.) in 1990. In 1996, she received her doctorate from the Free University of Berlin with a dissertation on the everyday lives of Muslim women in the Nigerian city of Kano. She completed her habilitation at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2004 with a study of artisanal gold mining in Burkina Faso. Following academic appointments at the universities of Frankfurt (Main), Mainz, Halle-Wittenberg, Zurich and Uppsala, she was appointed Professor of Society, Politics and Economy of Africa at Leipzig University in 2012. From 2000 to 2007, Werthmann served as Coordinator of the Africa Working Group within the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology (DGSKA). She was a member of the editorial board of Africa Spectrum from 2004 to 2015 and of Sociologus from 2015 to 2026. Between 2015 and 2024, she also served on the editorial board of the African Social Studies book series published by Brill. Between 2004 and 2024, Werthmann served on several occasions as a member of the Executive Board and Steering Committee of the Association for African Studies in Germany (VAD).

Research

Werthmann’s research focuses on urban life, gender, Islam, mining and local political organisation. She has conducted field research in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. Within interdisciplinary research projects, she led sub-projects on industrial gold mining, urban mobility and vigilante groups. In 2022, she published City Life in Africa: Anthropological Insights, which provides a comprehensive overview of social anthropological research on urban Africa from the 1930s to the early 2000s.

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ SciPort RPL, CV (1990–2004) at the Institut für Ethnologie und Afrika-Studien, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, accessed: September 2, 2026.
  2. ↑ aegis – African Studies in Europe, short CV of Katja Werthmann, accessed: September 2, 2026.
  3. ↑ AD Rankings for Scientist, Katja Weerthmann, AD Scientific Index 2023, Universität Leipzig, accessed: September 2, 2026.