Heike Behrend

Behrend studied ethnology, sociology and religious studies at LMU Munich, the University of Vienna, and the Free University of Berlin. After completing her studies in ethnology with a Master's degree at the Free University of Berlin in 1973, she trained in documentary filmmaking at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin from 1980 to 1984.^[1] In 1987, she received her PhD from the Free University of Berlin with the thesis Die Zeit geht krumme Wege. Raum, Zeit und Ritual bei den Tugen in Kenia (Space, Time and Ritual of the Tugen in Kenya). In 1992, she obtained her habilitation from the University of Bayreuth with the thesis War in the North Ugandas. The Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena.^[2]

En Alemania, Behrend impartió clases en los Institutos de Etnología de la Universidad Libre de Berlín, la Universidad de Bayreuth y la Universidad de Maguncia . Tras una estancia como profesora visitante en la École des hautes études en sciences sociales de París en mayo de 1994, obtuvo una plaza de profesora titular en el Instituto de Estudios Africanos de la Universidad de Colonia . Durante diversas estancias como profesora visitante y becaria sénior, volvió a impartir clases en la École des Hautes Études de París en 1997 y, en 2003, en el Programa de Estudios Africanos (PAS) de la Universidad Northwestern , en Evanston, EE. UU. En 2007, realizó investigaciones en el Centro Internacional de Investigación de Estudios Culturales de Viena ^{[ 3 ]} y, en 2010, en la Universidad de Estudios Extranjeros de Tokio, en Japón ^{[ 2 ]} .

La investigación de Behrend se ha centrado principalmente en la cultura popular en África, la relación entre religión, guerra y violencia. Realizó trabajo de campo en África Oriental , particularmente en Kenia y Uganda. ^{[ 4 ]} Viajes más cortos para su investigación la llevaron a Nigeria , Ghana , entre otros países africanos. Uno de los primeros proyectos de investigación de Behrend se llevó a cabo en Kenia, donde estudió a la comunidad Tugen . En Spirit Possession, Modernity and Power in Africa, examinó cómo la posesión espiritual y los rituales se empleaban como formas de resistencia y mecanismos de adaptación frente al cambio sociopolítico. ^{[ 5 ]} En Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits. War in Northern Uganda 1986–97, analizó la biografía de la médium Acholi Alice Lakwena y la historia de su Movimiento del Espíritu Santo en Uganda desde perspectivas antropológicas sociales. ^{[ 6 ]} En su introducción a la traducción al inglés, el profesor de antropología de la Universidad de Yale, John FM Middleton, acogió con beneplácito la detallada descripción de Behrend sobre la organización interna del movimiento. ^{[ 7 ]}

Su autobiografía de 2020 Menschwerdung eines Affen. Eine Autobiografie der ethnografischen Forschung ( La encarnación de un simio. Una autobiografía de investigación etnográfica ) fue aclamada por la crítica. ^{[ 8 ]} Fue galardonado con el Premio de la Feria del Libro de Leipzig 2021 ^{[ 9 ]} y ha sido publicado en italiano y español. ^{[ 10 ]}

Being part of the research college "Media and Cultural Communication” of the Universities of Cologne, Bonn and Aachen, Behrend was one of the founders of the newly formed academic field of the anthropology of media in Germany. As part of her research on photography in Africa, she co-curated the exhibition Snap me one! Studio photographers in Africa. This exhibition was shown in 1999 in Germany,^[11] the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., and at the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam. In 2010, she curated the exhibition Photography as a Dream Machine. Popular African Photographers at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Additionally, she donated studio portraits from the East African Indian diaspora to the Smithsonian Museum collections.^[12]

Behrend was particularly interested in how African communities use visual media to represent themselves and engage with their past, as well as with their religious beliefs and practices.^[13] Her research contributed to the understanding of photography as a cultural practice that goes beyond mere documentation, influencing how history and memory are constructed and communicated.^[14]

Since her retirement in 2012, Behrend has been living and working in Berlin.^[15]

• 1999 Spirit Possession, Modernity & Power in Africa. Univ of Wisconsin Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-299-16634-2.
• 2000 Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda, 1985–97. Ohio University Press. 31 March 2000. ISBN 978-0-8214-4570-9.
• 2011 Resurrecting Cannibals: The Catholic Church, Witch-Hunts and the Production of Pagans in Western Uganda, Oxford: James Currey.
• 2013 Contesting Visibility: Photographic Practices on the East African Coast. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. 31 March 2014. ISBN 978-3-8394-2456-8.
• 2020 Menschwerdung eines Affen. Eine Autobiografie der ethnografischen Forschung, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-95757-955-3

• 2000. "Feeling Global": The Likoni Ferry Photographers in Mombasa, Kenya, African Arts, 33, 3, 70-77.
• 2001. Behrend, Heike (2001). "Fragmented visions: Photo collages by two Ugandan photographers". Visual Anthropology. 14 (3): 301–320. doi:10.1080/08949468.2001.9966837. ISSN 0894-9468.
• 2002. Werbner, Pnina, ed. (2002). "I am like a Movie Star in my Street. Photographic Self-Creation in Postcolonial Kenya". Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa. Zed Books. pp. 44–62. ISBN 978-1-85649-955-2.
• 2003. Photo-Magic. Photographies in Practices of Healing and Harming in Kenya and Uganda. Birgit Meyer (ed.), Journal of Religion in Africa, special issue on Media and Religion in Africa, 33, 2.
• 2007. The Rise of Occult Powers, AIDS and the Roman Catholic Church in Western Uganda, Journal of Religion in Africa, 37, pp. 41-57.
• 2010. Electricity, Spirit mediums and the Media of Spirits. Ludwig Jäger, Erika Linz, Irmela Schneider (eds.), Media, Culture and Mediality. New Insights into the Current State of Research, Bielefeld, pp. 187-200.
• 2011. "The Titanic in Kano”: Video, Gender and Islam in Northern Nigeria. Margot Badran (ed). Gender and Islam in Africa, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 173-189.
• 2012. 'The Terror of the Feast': Photography, Textiles & Memory in Weddings along the East African Coast. Richard Vokes (ed.) Photography in Africa. Ethnographic Perspectives. James Currey
• 2015. "Celebrating Life": The Construction of Photographic Biographies in Funeral Rites among Kenyan Christians. Christopher Morton and Darren Newbury (eds.),The African Photographic Archive. Research and Curatorial Strategies, Leiden: Brill, pp. 77-93.
• 2018. "Photography as Unveiling”: Muslim Discourses and Practices along the East African Coast. Felicitas Becker, Joel Cabrita and Marie Rodet (eds), Religion, Media and Marginality in Modern Africa, Athens, Ohio UP, pp. 112-132.
• 2019. Photographic Practices and the "Aesthetics of Withdrawal” among Muslims of the East African Coast. Birgit Meyer and Terje Stordalen (eds.), Figurations and Sensations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, London, pp. 185-197.

• 2001. with Jean-Francois Werner (eds.). Photography and Modernity in Africa, Visual Anthropology, 14, 3.
• 2003. L.T. Rubongoya. Naaho Nubo. The Ways of our Ancestors, Africans Write Back Series, series editor Heike Behrend, vol. 1, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
• 2004. M.W. Magezi, T.E. Nyakango, M.K. Aganatia. The People of the Rwenzoris. The Bayira (Bakonzo/Banande) and Their Culture, Africans Write Back Series, vol. 2, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
• 2015. with Anja Dreschke und Martin Zillinger (eds.), Trance Mediums and Technical Media. Spirit Possession in the Age of Technical Reproduction, New York: Fordham, ISBN 9780823253821.
• 2015. with Tobias Wendl (eds.). 9/11 and its Remediations in Africa, Berlin.

• 1982 "Im Bauch des Elefanten". An ethnographic film about age and death in the years in Kenya.^[18]
• 1985 "Gespräche mit Kopcherutoi". In this ethnographic film, an old woman named Kopcherutoi tells of her life in the Tugen mountains in Kenya.^[19]
• 1989 "Mary Akatsa, Prophetin". An ethnographic film about Mary Akatsa, a healer and prophetess in Kibera, a slum in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.^[20]
• 2011 "Satan Crucified. A Catholic Witch-Hunt in Western Uganda"^[21]