Personal Profile

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) D 55099 Mainz
Faculty 07, Department of Anthropology and African Studies
Mirco Göpfert
Personal Profile
Academic and Professional Positions
2011-
Research fellow and co-administrator of the “Boundary Work: Police in West Africa”
(funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG) project
2007-2010
Research assistant to Prof. Dr Carola Lentz at the Department of Anthropology and
African Studies, Mainz University
2006-2007
Research assistant to Dr Georg Glasze at the Department of Geography, Mainz
University
Education
2008-
Ph.D. student at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies of the Johannes
Gutenberg University Mainz.
Title of dissertation: The Gendarmerie in Niger
2003-2008
Studies in social anthropology (first major) and human geography (second major) at
the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg (2003-2004) and the Johannes Gutenberg
University Mainz (2004-2008), with an Erasmus year at the Paul Valéry University
Montpellier, France (2005-2006); M.A. (with distinction)
Grants and Fellowships
2012
Erasmus teaching fellowship (hosted by: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
EHESS Marseille)
2009-2011
Ph.D. fellowship from the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung
des deutschen Volkes)
2005-2006
Erasmus scholarship (hosted by: Paul Valéry University Montpellier, France)
Field Research
2012
Research on advanced training in the gendarmerie in Niger; comparative research on
police work in Ghana (3 months)
2011
Research on criminal investigations in the gendarmerie in Niger (2 months)
2011
Comparative research on police work in a German police station (1 month)
2009-2010
Research on everyday police work in the gendarmerie in Niger (12 months)
Last update: 18.06.2013
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) D 55099 Mainz
Faculty 07, Department of Anthropology and African Studies
Mirco Göpfert
2009
Literature research at the Centre de recherches sociologiques sur le droit et les
institutions pénales (CESDIP), Guyancourt, France (1 month)
2008-2009
Research on security and plural policing in Niamey, Niger (3 months)
2006
Research on secondary school education in northern Ghana (3 months)
Workshops Organised
2013
Just Police Work: Ethnographic Research on the Police in Africa. International workshop
held at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 12 - 15 June.
Papers
2013
Arrangements: Social dramas on a legal stage. Paper presented at the workshop “Just
police work: Ethnographic research on the police in Africa” in Mainz, June 2013.
2013
Soft law enforcement in the Nigérien gendarmerie: How a case is born. Paper presented at
the “Reconsidering policing in Africa” workshop in Oxford, May 2013.
2013
L’esthétique de la bureaucratie: la rédaction des procès-verbaux dans la gendarmerie
Nigérienne. Presented at the 6th Rencontre Européenne d’Analyse des Sociétés Politiques
(REASOPO) in Paris, January/February 2013.
2012
La violence policière en Afrique de l’Ouest: Dilemmes des auteurs et des ethnographes.
Presented in the graduate seminar “L’État vu d’en bas” of Giorgio Blundo at the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales EHESS Marseille, March 2012.
2012
L’esthétique de la bureaucratie: la rédaction des procès-verbaux dans la gendarmerie
Nigérienne. Presented in the doctoral seminar “Développement, politiques publiques et
modes de gouvernance: approches socio-anthropologiques” of Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales EHESS Marseille, March 2012.
2011
Violence as normal exception in West African police organizations (with Jan Beek).
Presented in the panel “Soldaten – Rebellen – Banditen: von Corpsgeist, Freiheitsbegriff und
Ehrvorstellungen” at the conference of the German Anthropological Association in Vienna,
September 2011.
2011
Violence as normal exception in West African police organizations (with Jan Beek).
Presented at the conference “Making sense of violence? Interdisciplinary approaches to
violence: past and present” in Bern, September 2011.
2011
Distantly close violence specialists: Paramilitary state organizations in West Africa (with Jan
Beek). Presented in the panel “Bureaucrats in Uniform: Historical and Anthropological
Explorations of an African Professional Field” at the European Conference on African Studies
ECAS in Uppsala, June 2011.
Last update: 18.06.2013
Mirco Göpfert
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) D 55099 Mainz
Faculty 07, Department of Anthropology and African Studies
2011
Distantly close violence specialists: Paramilitary state organizations in West Africa (with Jan
Beek). Presented in the workshop “Blurring of military and police roles” at the 11th Biennial
conference of ERGOMAS (European Research Group on Military and Society) in Amsterdam,
June 2011.
2011
Nähe und Ferne bei Gewaltspezialisten: Paramilitärische staatliche Organisationen in
Westafrika (with Jan Beek). Presented in the lecture series of the Department of
Anthropology and African Studies at Mainz University, May 2011.
2010
Bureaucratic aesthetics. Writing procès-verbaux in the Nigerien gendarmerie. Presented in
the panel “The working state in Africa: Public services and public servants in action” at the
conference of the German Association for African Studies in Mainz, April 2010.
2009
Security in nocturnal Niamey: Preliminary reflections and conceptual outlook. Presented at
the conference “États en chantier en Afrique au sud du Sahara” (“States at work in SubSaharan Africa”) in Niamey, December 2009.
2009
Abstention, delegation, imposition: Security in nocturnal Niamey. Presented in the panel
“Spaces of (In)Security” at the European Conference on African Studies ECAS in Leipzig, June
2009.
2009
Le policing au Niger. Presented in the seminar series of the Centre de recherches
sociologiques sur le droit et les institutions pénales (CESDIP) in Guyancourt, France, March
2009.
Last update: 18.06.2013