Charline Kopf

Academic interests 

Charline is a PhD candidate and Early Stage Researcher (ESR), part of the multi-disciplinary research project in the Anthropology of Human Security in Africa (Anthusia) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Her research interests focus on the anthropology of the state and migration, security practices as well as on the intersection between art, politics and postcolonial theory. Her master's project 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 (KCL), including a year at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Current Project

Her current ESR project focuses on the governing of migration between Sub-Saharan states through the past and future reconfigurations of a nearly abandoned colonial railway which intersects with a new border post in a town on the Malian-Senegalese border. The aim is to understand how the railway and border infrastructures as well as their attendant imaginaries of connectivity and remoteness have shaped the mobility and local perception of space and identity, and defined geopolitical territory in West African borderlands in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork conducted in Dakar, Bamako and a border town, she will investigate how tales of disconnection and enforced border controls coexist alongside the town’s history as vital trading place for people on both sides of the border and as crucial transport hub for the Senegalese and Malian economies.

Background

• MPhil in Social Anthropology, University of Oxford, 2018
  • Thesis: Dakar’s Museum of Black Civilisations: Towards an Imaginary of a Post-postcolonial World Order
     
• BA in European Studies, King's College London, 2016
  • Thesis: The Aesthetics of Securitisation and Desecuritisation: Artistic Practices challenging the EU Security Discourse on Immigrants around the Mediterranean.

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

Publications

• Kopf, Charline. 2018. "Dakar's Museum of Black Civilisations: Towards a New Imaginary of a Post-ethnographic Museum." Martor 23: pp.37-55.
• Bowling, Ben & Kopf, Charline. 2017. "Transnational policing in Europe and its local effects." European Police Science and Research Bulletin, Nr.3: pp.47-57.

• Kopf, Charline. 2017. "Reinventing the Mongolian Nutag (Homeland): Fixing a Nomadic Space and History in State Nationalism." Strife Journal, Issue 7, May/June: pp.31-39.