Charline Kopf

Academic interests 

Charline is a PhD candidate and Early Stage Researcher (ESR), part of the multi-disciplinary project in the Anthropology of Human Security in Africa (Anthusia) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Her current research interests focus on the anthropology of infrastructure, trade unions and logistics, as well as security, mobility and borders. Her master's project, at the intersection of art, politics and postcolonial theory, dealt with China’s infrastructure politics in Senegal and more specifically with the construction of the Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar. Prior to Oslo, Charline completed her MPhil degree in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and her undergraduate degree in European Studies at King’s College London, including a year at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Current Project

Her ESR project examines the almost abandoned Dakar-Bamako railway, ethnographically tracing the material and socio-political lives of trains and their infrastructure across Senegal and Mali as a lens into broader questions around the rhythms and routines of the railway workers’ ‘empty’ work; maintenance and perpetuation as forms of resistance; and transnational labour union solidarities. The research offers entry points into wider debates around how (post)colonial and capitalist relations are inscribed in material infrastructures but also how the latter enable at the same time as constrain translocal potentials of resistance and belonging.

Affiliation

• Early Stage Researcher in ANTHUSIA

Awards

• Carr and Stahl Fund, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, 2017
• Godfrey Liehnardt Fieldwork Grant, University of Oxford, 2017