Dr. Nicole Wiederroth

Project: "(Forced) Migration, Changing Environment and Climate in Eastern Africa. Tanzania's Transformation in the 20th Century." (funded by CLiSAP) 

The interdisciplinary research project concentrates on migration and environmental change in today’s Western Tanzania. As this part of the country gained only marginal attention in historical research so far, the current project will contribute to the historical knowledge of the area and the inhabitants and offers, due to its interdisciplinary approach, new results of the history of migration and environment. Considering perspectives of different actors, it is intended to reconstruct processes of environmental change.

After Tanzania’s independence in 1961, processes of landscape transformation were more visible than before. This is not only because methods of visualisation had improved continuously during the last century, but one reason for the landscapes’ (visible) transformation was also the governments’ refugee policy and the way of accommodating and integrating people who were seeking refuge in the Tanzanian society. In the course of independence struggles and due to violent conflicts in Eastern Africa, the newly founded Republic of Tanzania was one of the main destination countries on the African continent and Julius K. Nyereres’ policy of the open door welcomed refugees to play a vital role in the endeavour for modernisation and development. Thousands of refugees were settled in the former sparsely populated Western area. This policy as well as the territorial expansions of the refugee settlements had an impact not only on the inhabitants but also on the area and the (inter-)activities of divers actors in general.

Changing climatic conditions challenging the understanding of hitherto existing interpretations and relations of “nature” and “human”, not only by demanding for new co-operations between actors but also by seeking to direct and control particular processes of change. Adopting a broader concept of environment, the research project will consider social, cultural as well as political, economic and explicitly ecological processes of transformation.

Research Interest

• African History, Environmental History, History of Migration, Media and Colonialism

Academic Biography 

• Since April 2019
  Research Associate and Lecturer, Historical Institute, Extra-European History, University of Duisburg-Essen
• 2018 - 2019
  Joint Junior Research Fellow, German Historical Institute London & Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL (funded by the Max Weber Foundation)
• 2015 - 2018
  Postdoc Researcher, Department of History, Global History & CliSAP, CEN, University of Hamburg. Research project: “(Forced) Migration, Environmental Change and Climate” (funded by the German Research Foundation).
• April-June 2015
• Research Assistant, Historical Institute, Extra-European History, University of Duisburg-Essen.
• 2013-2014
  Research Assistant, Historical Institute, Extra-European History, University of Duisburg-Essen.
• 2009-2012
  Research Assistant, Historical Institute, Extra-European History, University Duisburg-Essen. Research project: „Politik gegen Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus in der Südafrikanischen Union“ (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG).
• Until 2005
  Studies of African Studies and Gender Studies at Humboldt-University of Berlin.

Publications/Theses

• Südafrikas Propaganda im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Zur medialen Legitimation einer kolonialen Ordnung. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag (2016).
• Radio broadcasting for blacks during the Second World War: "It could be dangerous ...", Historia. Journal of the Historical Association of South Africa 57,2 (2012), pp. 104-149 (http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/hist/v57n2/04.pdf).
•  "'The stories they tell us are of fables' – Der Broadcasting Service für die schwarze Bevölkerung in der Südafrikanischen Union, 1940-1945", Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 12,22 (2012), pp. 61-101 (http://stichproben.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_stichproben/Artikel/Nummer22/22_Wiederroth.pdf).