Scientific career

Sarah Fuchs was a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Konstanz. 

Her Ph.D. project entitled "Criminal Culture? Controversies on Human Trafficking and Begging Qur'anic Students in Senegal" was part of the research group "The Anthropology of Transnational Crime Control and Human Trafficking" and funded by the Cluster of Excellence "Cultural Foundations of Integration". The dissertation analyses competing practices and logics of interpretation with regard to Senegal's begging Qur'anic students and sheds light on the political, ideological and economic struggles at stake. It shows in what way and with which consequences transnational and local concepts of childhood and education are referred to eachother in a West African context.

Before, Sarah studied social and cultural anthropology, psychology and intercultural communication at the Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität Munich and completed her MA with a thesis entitled "The Meaning of Integration: Political Action and Lifeworlds in Germany".

Teaching

Summer 2015: Ambivalent Help: An Anthropological Gaze at Humanitarian Action.

Winter 2013/14: Anthropology of Childhood

Presentations

05/2015: "Freiwillig oder wider Willen? (Über-)Lebensentscheidungen auf dem afrikanischen Kontinent". Lecture series "Was entscheiden wir eigentlich? Praktiken praktisch erforschen", Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. With Tim Bunke, Anna Hüncke and Thomas G. Kirsch.

04/2015: "From Child Trafficking to Modernisation? The Ongoing Crisis of Senegal's Qur'anic schools". Islam in Africa. Historical and Contemporary Processses of Islamisation and Re-Islamisations in Africa, University of Berne (CH)

03/2015: "Complicity through Charity? The Senegalese Dilemma with the Qur'anic Students". Conference on Complicity, University of Brighton (UK)

03/2013; "Ein 'Schock-Konzept' als Lösung? Senegals Koranschulen im Zentrum des Kampfes gegen Menschenhandel". Veletzte Leben, verwehrte Rechte. Menschenhandel im 21. Jahrhundert. Studentisches interdisziplinäres Symposium, Berlin

Publications

2017 (forthcoming): "Preparing the Future: The Commitments of the African Movement of Working Children and Youth". Childhood, under review.

2016: "Nur ein bettelnder Schüler ist ein guter Schüler". Themen, Thesen, Texte. Magazine of the Cluster of Excellence "Cultural Foundations of Integration". Interview conducted by Marion Voigtmann. 

2015: "Wie aus Koranlehrern Kinderhändler werden. Senegals Dilemma um seine bettelnde Koranschüler". Research reportages. Three-part summer series of the Cluster of Excellence "Cultural Foundations of Integration". http:/www.exzellenzcluster.uni-konstanz.de/fuchs-koranschulen-senegal.html.

Research interests

  • Human Rights
  • Humanitarianism
  • Concepts of Childhood and Education
  • Education systems and Islam in West Africa