Selected Publications

For the full list of publications, see complete CV

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-3173-2410, Scopus author ID: 25959246200
If you have no access to the journal articles, please contact me.
 

Monographs

Pelican, Michaela. 2015. Masks and Staffs: Identity Politics in the Cameroon Grassfields. Oxford, New York: Berghahn. Read introduction
Book reviews by Peter Geschiere, 2018, Africa 88(3): 626-627; Jude Fokwang, 2016, American Anthropologist 118(4): 849-850; Ousmanou Adama, 2016, Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Afrikastudien. Newsletter 2016-2.
Pelican, Michaela. 2006. Getting along in the Grassfields: interethnic relations and identity politics in Northwest Cameroon. Halle, Saale: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt.
Pelican, Michaela. 1999. Die Arbeit der Mbororo-Frauen früher und heute: eine Studie zum Wandel der sozio-ökonomischen Situation semi-nomadischer Fulbe-Frauen in Nordwest Kamerun. Bayreuth: Universitätsbibliothek Bayreuth.

Edited volumes/special issues

Pelican, Michaela, Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf, and Karim Zafer (eds.). 2020. Flucht - Familie - soziale Netzwerke: Forschungen mit Geflüchteten in und um Köln. Kölner Arbeitspapiere für Ethnologie (KAE) No. 08.
Pelican, Michaela and Sofie Steinberger (eds.). 2017. Melilla. Perspectives on a Border Town. Kölner Arbeitspapiere zur Ethnologie 6. Institut für Ethnologie, Universität zu Köln.
University of Cologne Forum "Ethnicity as a Political Resource" (ed.). 2015. Ethnicity as a political resource: Conceptualizations across Disciplines, Regions, and Periods. Bielefeld: Transcript. Open Access E-Book
Maruyama, Junko and Michaela Pelican (eds.). 2015. Indigenous Identities and Ethnic Coexistence in Africa. Special issue of African Study Monographs 36(1).
Pelican, Michaela and Mahir Şaul (eds.). 2014. African Global Entrepreneurs, Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development (UAS) 43: 1,2,3.
Heiss, Jan Patrick and Michaela Pelican (eds.). 2014. "Making a Future" in Contemporary Africa. Special issue of Journal des Africanistes 84(1).
Pelican, Michaela (ed.). 2014. BAOHAN Street: An African Community in Guangzhou. Documentary photographs by Li Dong. Kölner Arbeitspapiere zur Ethnologie 4. Institut für Ethnologie, Universität zu Köln.
Damir-Geilsdorf, Sabine, Mira Menzfeld und Michaela Pelican (eds.). 2014. Islam und Sport: Einblicke in das interdisziplinäre Forschungs- und Lehrprojekt „Ethnographie vor der Haustür“ der Universität zu Köln. Kölner Arbeitspapiere zur Ethnologie 5. Institut für Ethnologie, Universität zu Köln.

Selected articles and book chapters

Barabantseva, Elena, Caroline Grillot, Michaela Pelican. 2023. Embodied by state borders: citizenship negotiations of children in Chinese–foreign families in the People’s Republic of China. JEMS, DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2023.2206000 (open access)
Pelican, Michaela. 2022. Studying conflict and ethnicity through performative and audio-visual research methods. In: M. Höhne, E. Gabbert, J. Eidson (eds.). Dynamics of Identification and Conflict: Anthropological Encounters. New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 105-133.
Pelican, Michaela. 2022. The Anglophone conflict in Cameroon – historical and political background. Freiburg: ABI Working Paper 20.
Pelican, Michaela, Kim Schumann, Sina Plücken, David Drew. 2022. Mbororo under Attack: Extreme Speech and Violence in the Anglophone Conflict in Cameroon. Freiburg: ABI Working Paper 21. 
Ngeh, Jonathan and Michaela Pelican. 2022. Innovation, music and future making of African youths in a challenging environment: examples from Cameroon and Nigeria. In: C. Greiner, M. Bollig and S. Van Wolputte (eds.) African Futures. Leiden, Boston MA: Brill Academic Publisher.
Damir-Geilsdorf, Sabine and Michaela Pelican. 2019. Between regular and irregular employment: Subverting the kafala system in the GCC countries. Migration and Development 8(2): 155-175.
Ngeh, Jonathan und Michaela Pelican. 2018. Intersectionality and the Labour Market in the United Arab Emirates: the Experiences of African Migrants. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 143(2): 171-194.
Pelican, Michaela. 2015. Neoliberal Challenges and Transnational Lives of Cameroonian Migrants in Dubai. In: Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf and Dale F. Eickelman (eds.). Africa and the Gulf Region: Blurred Boundaries and Shifting Ties. Berlin: Gerlach Press: 92-110. Abstract
Pelican, Michaela and Junko Maruyama. 2015. The Indigenous Rights Movement in Africa: Perspectives from Botswana and Cameroon. African Study Monographs 36(1): 49-74. Abstract
Pelican, Michaela and Jan Patrick Heiss. 2014. "Making a future" in contemporary Africa. Introduction. Journal des Africanistes 84(1): 7-19. Abstract
Şaul, Mahir and Michaela Pelican. 2014. Global African Entrepreneurs: A new research perspective on contemporary African migration. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development (UAS) 43: 1-16. Abstract
Pelican, Michaela. 2014. Urban Lifeworlds of Cameroonian Migrants in Dubai. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development (UAS) 43 : 255-309. Abstract
Pelican, Michaela. 2013. Insights from Cameroon: Five years after the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Anthropology Today 29(3): 13-16. Abstract
Pelican, Michaela. 2013. International Migration: Virtue or Vice? Perspectives from Cameroon. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39(2): 237-258. Abstract
Pelican, Michaela. 2011. Mbororo on the move: from pastoral mobility to international travel. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 29(4): 427-440. Abstract
Pelican, Michaela. 2009. Complexities of indigeneity and autochthony: an African example. American Ethnologist 36(1): 149-162. Abstract

Transfer: podcasts, exhibitions, documentary shorts

Podcast series 'Alter Voices - Covid Stories', outcome of the research unit 'The Production and Reproduction of Social Inequalities', 2022.
Direct link to Spotify
Exhibition: China Migrant: Photographs and short films by Daniel Traub. IN-EAST Institute of East Asian Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, November 2019 ‒ March 2020. Curators: Birgit Mersmann, Michaela Pelican, Daniel Traub.
Podcast Series 'Research, Action & Art', Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Cologne, 2016; student contributions supervised by Caterina Reinker, Michaela Pelican and Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf.
Documentary short: Pelican, Michaela and Francesco Bondanini. 2014. Portrait of a Migrant Woman: Martha in Dubai, 14:20 min.
Documentary short: Pelican, Michaela and Nikolaus Greil. 2013. 'Performing Ethnography': Cameroonian masked performance enacted by anthropology students of the University of Cologne as part of the course on methods of visual and theatre anthropology, 5:31 min.
To view previous films see Visual and Media Anthropology

Radio interviews

Radio interview on witchcraft (clipping, in German), 6 min.
WDR 5, Diesseits von Eden, 14.04.2013, contribution by Naima El Moussaoui
Interviews about the photo exhibition "Baohan Street: an African community in Guangzhou"
DRadio Wissen, 15.10.2014, 06:35 min, by Grit Eggerichs
Afrotown in Guangzhou – Gespräch mit Michaela Pelican


DLF (Deutschlandfunk), 16.10.2014, 03:58 min, by Markus Dichmann
Chocolate City – Fotoausstellung über Guangzhous schwarzes Viertel