Prof. Dr. Matthias Krings

Personal Profile

Matthias Krings is Professor of Anthropology and African Popular Culture at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. He has specialized in the study of African popular culture, particularly film and video, the anthropology of migration and diaspora, and the anthropology of religion. He is currently studying the re-mediation of foreign films by African cinema narrators, and also working on a book about the mediation of cultural difference in Africa. He has done extensive fieldwork in Nigeria, particularly in the Hausa speaking north of the country, and recently also in Tanzania.

Among his more recent publications are „Nollywood goes East. The localization of Nigerian video films in Tanzania”, Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Ralph Austen & Mahir Saul: Athens OH: Ohio University Press (2010); „A prequel to Nollywood: South African photo novels and their pan-African consumption in the late 1960s”, Journal of African Cultural Studies 22,1 (2010); „Marke ‘Osama’. Über Kommunikation und Kommerz mit Bin-Laden-Bildern in Nigeria”, Peripherie 113 (2009); „Turning rice into pilau. The art of video narration in Tanzania”, Intermédialités 4 (2009). Together with Holger Kirscht he has directed “Mother of the Waters”, Göttingen (2003), a documentary on migrant settlements at Lake Chad.

Before coming to Mainz in 2005 Matthias Krings held assignments as part-time lecturer at University of Cologne, as senior researcher at the Research School “Media and Cultural Communication”, University of Cologne (2003–2005), and as junior researcher at the Special Research Program “West-African Savannah”, University of Frankfurt (1996–2002).

Matthias Krings received his MA in Anthropology from University of Mainz in 1996, and his PhD from University of Frankfurt (Main) in 2002. He wrote his MA dissertation based on a 14 months empirical study on the bori cult of spirit possession among the Hausa of Nigeria, and his PhD thesis on community formation and the exploitation of natural resources in settlements of the Lake Chad area.