Research Projects

Bells, Drums, and Muezzins: Colonial (In)Tolerance of Religious Sounds (DFG research project, 2024-2028)

Modern colonial empires were multiethnic and multireligious entities that partly legitimized their conquest and rule by claiming they had to "pacify the so-called uncivilized peoples" through the promotion of religious freedom and tolerance. The proposed subproject addresses the resulting contradictions in the history of religious (in)tolerance within the colonial societies of the British Empire by focussing on practices and negociations of (inter-)religious noise tolerance. Using social ingroup-outgroup concepts, it explores how acceptance or rejection of sounds can be understood within a multireligious colonial context. As colonial urbanization led to confrontations among different religious norms and ideas related to noise in public space, religious authorities lodged complaints at colonial police stations about "noise disturbances" caused by secular groups or other faith communities. At the same time, residents living near churches, mosques, or traditional African initiation societies demanded bans on the Muslim call to prayer, church bells or nocturnal drumming. The project analyzes how British colonial administration managed such local conflicts through technical, political and legal measures. Through this historically comparative approach, we investigate which sounds were considered tolerable from religious or secular perspectives and which were percieved, in terms of quality and quantity, as intolerable blasphemy or as offenses against public order (Work Package 1). When religious sounds were condemned or secular noises rejected by religious actors, project members examine how respect or disrespect was negociated or enforced by colonial institutions (Work Package 2). By reflecting methodologically on noise (in)tolerance as an indicator of intergroup conflict, this historical study bridges the two meanings of tolerance - as attitude and as practice (Work Package 3). The project focuses on selected colonial metropolises (for example, Accra, Ghana). The comparative analysis of these cases follows the Disapproval-Respect model developed by our research group. In doing so, this subproject contributes valuable insights to the broader research network regarding the historical dynamics of tolerance practices grounded in diverse religious beliefs and in multicultural settings.

The Breeding of (Post-)Colonial Livestock in Namibia - Historical, Socio-Ecological and Genetic Transformations

(DFG joint project of the Universities of Passau und Gießen toghether with the German Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture (DITLS), funded since 2021)

The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach to study livestock breeding in Namibia from the onset of colonial rule (1884) to the present as an intertwined process of historical, socio-ecological, and genetic transformations. The establishment of colonial systems in Africa deeply affected local societies and caused far-reaching changes in habitats, biodiversity, resource use, and land management. Livestock farming played a central role in the colonial enterprises in what is now Namibia, and colonization led to extensive diversification of livestock systems. This, in turn, triggered transformation processes in livestock populations at both phenotypic and genotypic levels. Colonial visions of the future included both the use of local breeds and the introduction of European ones. This ambition for planned transformation was itself part of the legitimation of colonialism and biologistic racism: existing production systems and livestock populations - like African societies themselves - were regarded as in need of improvement under European guidance. In exchange and cooperation with African laborers, new forms of animal husbandry and breeding were developed on emerging colonial farms. Through this exploratory approach, the human actors involved were continuously challenged by intercultural communication and by discrepancies between breeding objectives and outcomes. The historical subproject (Passau) investigates the strategies through which colonial breeding practices were shaped and how human-animal relations in colonial contexts evolved in response to breeding results. It applies a microhistorical perspective to African farms established by former students of the agricultural German Colonial School in Witzenhausen and the Colonial Women's School in Rendsburg. The social ecology subproject (DITSL) examines the production and action logics of livestock farmers in different contemporary pastoral systems in Namibia. It explores how these logics emerged and how they are linked to human-animal-environment relationships. The animal breeding subproject (Gießen) then assesses the extent to which colonial social transformations influenced the definition of breeding goals and whether breeding processes aligned with these goals are still measurable today through genetic data. By integrating these disciplinary perspectives, the project analyses historical, social, spatial-ecological, and genetic transformations in direct relation to one another for the first time in this kind of case study. This approach helps to determine whether and to what extent colonialism permanently altered pastoral systems, or whether African breeding and husbandry practices ultimately proved resilient.

Since 2014

Research on the visual history of environmental description and perception, as well as on the methdology of communicating historical knowledge through comics - both in research projects (for example, at the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg ) and in teaching (such as through short comic stories on agrarian colonialism).