Dr. Michael Stasik, 2017-2022
Curriculum Vitae
Michael is now at the University of Basel. Link to homepage
Michael Stasik is an
anthropologist working at the intersection of cultures, economies, and
mobilities in West Africa. His project at the MPI-MMG explored practices of
transnational migration in West Africa by considering the trajectories and
lifeworlds of individual/non-associational migrants in Ghana. The main interest
here was to understand dynamics of the diversification and individualization of
migration in the sub-region. Related research questions concerned the
significance of distance, autonomy, and aloneness in constituting migrant
experiences and aspirations. Michael’s
PhD research was an ethnographic study of a major bus station in Ghana’s
capital Accra, focused on how West
African urbanites make use of, and thereby reshape, infrastructures of mobility
and exchange. His MPhil research examined the meanings that youth in Freetown,
Sierra Leone, invest in popular music, especially with regard to the social and
affective negotiations of love, intimacy, and reciprocity. He obtained his
MPhil from the African Studies Centre Leiden and his PhD from the University of
Bayreuth, where he also worked as researcher and lecturer in Anthropology
(2011-2017). He was a recipient
of the Young Scholars’ Award of the African Studies Association in Germany, the
Dissertation Award of the University of Bayreuth, and ASC’s Africa Thesis
Award.
Research projects
- Individual migration in West Africa (completed)