Academic Visitors

Prof. Dr. Hermílio Santos

Hermilio Bild klein We are glad to again receive Prof. Dr. Hermílio Santos, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), as a guest at the Center of Methods in Social Sciences (MZS) of the University of Göttingen in November 2019. His visit is connected with the cooperation project: “Research with Biographical Narratives” funded by Edital FAPERGS/CAPES 06/2018, a partnership for the internationalization of doctoral programs of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Prof. Hermílio Santos was previously at the MZS, supported by DAAD and Capes scholarships (Brazilian Federal Ministry of Education), from December 2011 to February 2012, in December 2013, from June to July 2014, and from December 2017 to March 2018.

Hermílio Santos holds a Doctorate in Political Sciences from the Free University of Berlin and is currently professor of Social Sciences at PUCRS in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Prof. Santos has been the president of the Research Committee: “Biography and Society” of the International Sociological Association (ISA) since 2018 and is Chair of the Local Organizing Committee of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology, which will take place in Porto Alegre in 2020.

His research interests lie in the areas of youth and violence, women and crime, narrative and biographical research, and the sociology of Alfred Schütz. Prof. Santos has produced documentary films on topics related to his research, such as “Surveilled Intimacy” (2010), “Infância Falada – Histories of Transformation Based on Dialogue” (2016), and “Lifeworld – The Sociology of Alfred Schütz” (2018). He is currently producing documentaries on the Brazilian borders and on biographical research.

Prof. Dr. Steve Tonah

Bild_Tonah I We look forward to welcoming Steve Tonah from the Institute of Sociology of the University of Ghana as a guest at the Center of Methods in Social Sciences of the Georg-August-University Göttingen in November 2019.

Steve Tonah studied Sociology at the University of Bielefeld after completing a B.A. in Economics and Sociology at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. After completing his diploma there in 1989, he went on to obtain his doctorate in "Development Sociology" in Bielefeld in 1993. During the seven years he lived in Germany, he conducted field research in both Ghana and Kenya, and temporarily worked in the US as a research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, from 2000 to 2010, he was a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle and from 2007 to 2010 he worked in the VW project "States at Work. Public Services and Civil Servants in West Africa: Education and Justice in Benin, Ghana, Mali and Niger".

Currently, Steve Tonah is a professor at the University of Ghana, where in 2009 he was named "Best Researcher" due to his considerable research and publishing activities. His main areas of work are Sociological Conflict and Migration Research. In particular, the migration history of the Fulani, their conflicts and constellations of power in relation to other ethnic groups, as well as local and national authorities, have been central themes in his research for over 30 years. In recent years, his work has also expanded to include empirical studies on so-called irregular and transnational migration. Here, for instance, he examines state-supported programs for the return of migrants and the role of family and migrants’ associations in these contexts.

In November, Steve Tonah will be a keynote speaker at the international conference on "Exile - Flight - Persecution" (co-funded by the DFG), where he will talk about his research on migration patterns from West Africa to Libya and Europe. In addition, during his time in Göttingen, we will discuss possibilities for a joint research project on flight and migration.

Memberships: Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences; Ghana Sociological Association; International Sociological Association (ISA); Ghana Association of Writers.