Dr. Michael Stasik (Universität Basel)

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.