Summer School 2013 "Situating Media" - Participants
Simone Pfeifer (Cologne)
Media, Gender, Generations: Translocal Networking and Media Spaces of Senegalese in Berlin and Dakar
The Ph.D. research project examines forms of translocal sociality and media practices of West African Migrants in Europe and their families and friends in West Africa. The media ethnography pays particular attention to social and media spaces between Germany and Senegal and their gender and age specific appropriations and configurations by Senegalese in (mainly) Berlin and Dakar. A special focus of analyses lies on the practices surrounding smartphones, analogue and digital photography, social online applications like Facebook and Skype and their appropriation by users of different age and sex. On the one hand, the project assumes that West African migrants locate themselves both within the country of origin but also within the European country of residence through the social practices associated with the production and reception of media. On the other hand, it examines the influence of media on translocal social changes and takes into account both the transformation processes in the country of origin as well as the country of residence. The research project complements the space and place centred approach of “multi-sited ethnography” with the “multi-temporal ethnography” and a perspective on temporality. By studying translocal migratory relations between Germany and Senegal, and taking into account the role of media practices in the translocal social context, the project is positioning itself at the interface of social and media anthropology.
Simone Pfeifer is currently a lecturer and working on her Ph.D. at the Research and Teaching Network “Media, Culture, and Society” at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology in Cologne. She holds both a Master of Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester and a Master (Magister) of Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Cologne. Her academic research focuses on media practices and mediated sociality, audio-visual and media anthropology, migration, mobility and translocality in Europe and West Africa.