Carola Lentz

From 1972 to 1979 Lentz studied sociology, political science, German studies, and education at University of Göttingen and Free University of Berlin. After passing her first state exam in secondary school education at University of Göttingen in 1979, she there continued her studies in sociology while also working as a teacher at "Arbeit und Leben" ('work and life') (an association supported by the German trade union federation) in Göttingen and Braunschweig. Following two years of teacher training in Hamburg from 1981 until 1982, she sat the second state exam, completing her qualification to work as a secondary school teacher. See also: See also: Between 1992 and 1995, Lentz conducted her habilitation research, supported by a scholarship by the German Research Foundation. Wassenaar. From April 2002 to September 2019, Lentz was professor for social anthropology at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. During that time, she was awarded various fellowships, amongst others at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (October – December 2002) and at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, Cambridge, From April to July 2015, she held a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study (:de:Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg) in Delmenhorst. From September 2017 to July 2018, she was a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), leading the focus group 'Family History and Social Change in Africa'. From 2018 to 2020, she was vice-president of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In spring 2019, she held a two-month fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, participating in a research group on the new middle class in Africa. Since October 2019, she has held the position of senior research professor at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. On November 13, 2020, Lentz became president of the Goethe-Institut, following her predecessor Klaus-Dieter Lehmann. In autumn 2020, she has been elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. == Research focus ==

Thematically, Lentz' research focuses on ethnicity, nationalism, the politics of memory, land rights, land disputes, colonial history, the anthropology of the state, elite biographies, the emergence of African middle class, qualitative research methods and anthropological theories of culture. Her regional focus is West Africa, in particular Ghana and Burkina Faso. In 2006, she supervised the fieldwork of a group of Master's students on work at police stations, courts and schools in Upper West Region, Ghana. In that context she also conducted her own research on the history and the contemporary situation of educational elite(s) and the newly emerging middle class in Northern Ghana. Between 2009 and 2013, Lentz coordinated a doctoral research group that explored the politics of memory and national-day celebrations in Africa as part of the programme 'PRO Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften 2015' at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. Moreover, Lentz has served as editor and reviewer. She was a member of the academic advisory councils of, among others, the journals Food and Foodways, Africa, Ethnos, African Affairs, Africa Spectrum, :de:Paideuma, and :de:Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. She was co-editor of the series Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung. as well as of the series African Social Studies issued by Brill, Leiden. She was also a member of the board of trustees of the Heckmann Wentzel Foundation and a member of the academic advisory council of the Einstein Chronoi Center. == Selected works ==

Monographs (selection) • 2022. Imagining Futures: Memory and Belonging in an African Family (with Isidore Lobnibe). Bloomington: Indiana University Press • 2021. Das Goethe-Institut. Eine Geschichte von 1951 bis heute (with Marie-Christin Gabriel). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, • 2018. Remembering Independence (with David Lowe). London: Routledge, • 2013. Land, Mobility and Belonging in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, • 2006. Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (International African Library 33), • 1998. Die Konstruktion von Ethnizität. Eine politische Geschichte Nord-West Ghanas, 1870–1990. Köln: Köppe (Studien zur Kulturkunde 112), • 1988. '''Von seiner Heimat kann man nicht lassen'. Migration in einer Dorfgemeinde in Ecuador. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, (revised vision of the doctoral thesis submitted in 1987 at University of Hannover; Spanish translation 1997: Migración e identidad étnica. La transformación histórica de una comunidad indígena en la Sierra ecuatoriana''. Quito: Abya Yala, ). • 1986. ''Saisonarbeiter auf einer Zuckerrohrplantage in Ecuador. 'Buscando la vida...'. Auf der Suche nach dem Leben. Aachen: Edition Herodot, (Spanish translation 1991: 'Buscando la vida'. Trabajadores eventuales en una plantación de azúcar''. Quito: Abya Yala). • 1985. Migrantes. Campesinos de Flores y Licto. Historias de vida (with Hernán Carrasco). Quito: Abya Yala. Edited books (selection) • 2013. Thomas Bierschenk, Matthias Krings and Carola Lentz (eds.): Ethnologie im 21. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Reimer, • 2011. Carola Lentz and Godwin Kornes (eds.): Staatsinszenierung, Erinnerungsmarathon und Volksfest. Afrika feiert 50 Jahre Unabhängigkeit. Frankfurt a. M.: Brandes & Apsel, • 2009. Carola Lenz (ed.): Gandah-Yir: The House of the Brave. The Biography of a Northern Ghanaian Chief (ca. 1872–1950), by S.W.D.K. Gandah (Research Review Supplement 20). Legon: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, • 2008. Carola Lentz (ed.): The Silent Rebel: The Missing Years. Life in the Tamale Middle School (1940–47), by S.W.D.K. Gandah (Research Review Supplement 18). Legon: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, • 2006. Anna-Maria Brandstetter and Carola Lentz (eds.): 60 Jahre Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien. Ein Geburtstagsbuch (Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung 14). Köln: Köppe, • 2006. Richard Kuba and Carola Lentz (eds.): Land and the Politics of Belonging in West Africa (African Social Studies Series 9). Leiden: Brill, • 2003. Richard Kuba, Carola Lentz and Claude Nurukyor Somda (eds.): Histoire du peuplement et relations interethniques au Burkina Faso. Paris: Karthala, • 2001. Richard Kuba, Carola Lentz and Katja Werthmann (eds.): Les Dagara et leurs voisins. Histoire de peuplement et relations interethniques au sud-ouest du Burkina Faso. Frankfurt a. M.: SFB 268, • 2000. Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent (eds.): Ethnicity in Ghana. The Limits of Invention. Basingstoke: Macmillan, • 1999. Carola Lentz (ed.): Changing Food Habits. Case Studies from Africa, South America and Europe (Food in History and Culture 2). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, Articles (selection) • with Andrea Noll: "Across regional disparities and beyond family ties: a Ghanaian middle class in the making (with Andrea Noll)". History and Anthropology, 2021 • with Marie-Christin Gabriel and Konstanze N'Guessan: "Embodying the nation: the production of sameness and difference in national-day parades", Ethnography, 21(4): 506–536 (2020) • "Doing being middle-class in the global South: comparative perspectives and conceptual challenges". Africa, 90 (3): 439–69.2018 • "Culture: the making, unmaking and remaking of an anthropological concept". Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 142 (2), 2017: 181–204 (2017) • "Ghanaian 'monument wars': the contested history of the Nkrumah statues". ''Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines'', 227: 551–82 (2017) • "Tribalism' and ethnicity in Africa: a review of four decades of Anglophone research". Cahiers des Sciences Humaines, 31: 303–28. (1995) • "Home, death and leadership: discourses of an educated elite from northwestern Ghana". Social Anthropology, 2: 149–69 (1994) • "Feldforschung als Interaktionsprozeß – Erfahrungen in indianischen Dörfern in Ecuador". Sociologus, 39: 123–51. (1989) • "Zwischen 'Zivilisation' und 'eigener Kultur'. Neue Funktionen ethnischer Identität bei indianischen Arbeitsmigranten in Ecuador". Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 17: 34–46. (1988) == Further reading ==

• Fellow Netherlands Inst. f. Adv. Stud. in the Humanities 2000–2001 • Fulbright Fellow/ W.E.B. Du Bois Inst. for African and African American Res., Harvard University. (Cambridge, USA) 2008–2009 • Fellow humanities College "Work and Life Course in Global Historical Perspective" HU Berlin 2012–2013 • Fellow :de:Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, 2015 • Fellow Berlin Institute for Advanced Study 2017–2018 • Fellow Stellenbosch Inst. for Advanced Study 2019 • Melville J. Herskovits Award of African Studies Association (ASA) 2013 • Member. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) 2014 • Secretary of social science Class BBAW 2016–2018 • Title of a Honorary Chief (Maalu Naa) in the traditional region of Nandom Ghana (2013). == References ==