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Institut für Ethnologie

Foto: UHH/Ohme

PD Dr. Julia Vorhölter

Julia Vorhölter

Foto: Julia Vorhölter

Vertretung einer Professur

Anschrift

Universität Hamburg
Institut für Ethnologie
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, West
20146 Hamburg

Büro

Raum: 237

Sprechzeiten

Nach Vereinbarung per E-Mail

Kontakt

Tel.: +49 40 42838-3574

Research Profile

Throughout my career, both in research and teaching, I have been interested in a wide range of topics and have carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Niger, South Africa, Uganda, and Germany. My earlier work was situated at the interface between socio-cultural anthropology and African studies, exploring contemporary dynamics on the African continent which are shaped both by local histories and political struggles as well as external interventions and global forms of structural violence. My Magister thesis (2008, University of Hamburg) focused on a faith-based organization in Pretoria which attempted to implement participatory forms of social work amidst complex race, gender, and class dynamics in South African society. My doctoral dissertation (2014, Göttingen University) analyzed the situation of youth in Gulu, Northern Uganda, in the aftermath of the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan Government (1986–2006). My habilitation thesis (2022, Leipzig University), examined the recent emergence and popularization of psychotherapy and related discourses, practices and institutions in Uganda. My current research, is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Germany and focuses on sleep. The project draws attention to the dilemmas of sleep knowledge production and follows technological interventions which are designed to reveal, manage, and/or overcome sleep problems.

Publikationen

Monographien:

  • ·2014. Youth at the Crossroads – Discourses on Socio-Cultural Change in Post-War Northern Uganda. Göttingen: Göttingen University Press. (Göttingen Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, 7). Online at: http://www.univerlag.uni-goettingen.de/ (Open Access)
  • 2009. Towards a Culture of Participation? The Influence of Organizational Culture on Participation and Empowerment of „Beneficiaries“ – A Case Study of a Social Organization in Pretoria. Berlin: LIT. (Interethnische Beziehungen und Kulturwandel - Ethnologische Beiträge zu soziokultureller Dynamik, 65).

Aufsätze in Fachzeitschriften (Peer-Reviewed)

  • (accepted, forthcoming) Ingenious, Imposturous, or Simply Incredible? Performing Pioneering at Academic Conferences. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.
  • 2025 (co-written with Amand-Gabriel Führer). Liberation Medicine: Past, Present and Future. Introduction to Special Issue on ‘Liberation Medicine’. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry: doi.org/10.1007/s11013-025-09949-w.  
  • 2024. Introduction: Living in a Mode of Despite (co-written with Rishabh Raghavan and Mascha Schulz). American Ethnologist Curated Collection: americanethnologist.org/online-content/collections/
  • 2024. The Insomniac’s Stubborn Hope. American Ethnologist Curated Collection (Theme: Living in a Mode of Despite): americanethnologist.org/online-content/collections/
  • 2024. “Agency”. The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Rachel Cantave. Online: http://doi.org/10.29164/24agency.
  • 2024. Introduction. Universality in Pieces? Mobilizations of Science in a Fractured World (co-written with Claudia Lang, Samiksha Bhan, Hanna Nieber, Hanna Werner, Hynek Bečka and Desirée Kumpf). Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. 149(1): 1–12.
  • 2024. Rethinking Psychology in Africa: From Decolonizing to Universalizing Knowledge in in an Emerging Field. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 149(1): 33–52.
  • 2024. (Mis)Perceiving Apnea and Insomnia in Germany: A Tale of Two Disorders. Medical Anthropology 43(1): 46–60.
  • 2023. Ethical Endeavors: A Review of European Social Anthropology 2022. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 31(4):182–202.
  • 2023: Sleeping with Strangers – Techno-Intimacy and Side-Affects in a German Sleep Lab. Historical Social Research, 48:2 (23-40).
  • 2022. Psychotherapy as Care in Uganda: Envisioning a ‘More-Than-Critique-Anthropology’. cultura & psyché. DOI: 10.1007/s43638-022-00041-3.
  • 2021. Family Trouble: Changing (Dis)Orders and Psychotherapeutic Interventions in Uganda. Ethos 49(4):379–400.
  • 2021. Anthropology Anonymous? – Pseudonyms and Pseudo-Confidentiality as Challenges for Ethnography in the 21st Century. Ethnoscripts 23(1):15-33.
  • 2020. A Pioneer of Psy: The First Ugandan Psychiatric Nurse & her (Different) Tale of Psychiatry in Uganda. Transcultural Psychiatry, February. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461520901642.2019.
  • 2019. Struggling to be a “Happy Self” – Psychotherapy and the Medicalization of Unhappiness in Uganda? Current Anthropology 60(2):194–223.
  • 2017. Class-based Chronicities of Suffering and Seeking Help – Comparing Addiction Treatment Programs in Uganda. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, 41(4):564–589.
  • 2017. Homosexuality, Pornography and other ‘Modern Threats’ – The Deployment of Sexuality in Discourses on Social Change in Uganda. Critique of Anthropology 37(1): 93–111.
  • 2016. Beyond Dichotomies – Complexifying Intergenerational Debates and Discourses on the Post-War Society in Northern Uganda. Journal of Peace and Security Studies 2(1): 1-19.
  • 2012. Studying Development Organizations – Towards a Culture of Participation? Journal of Organizational Ethnography 1(2): 178-194.
  • 2012. Negotiating Social Change: Ugandan Discourses on Westernisation and Neo-Colonialism as Forms of Social Critique. Journal of Modern African Studies 50(2): 283-307.
  • 2010. Lenhart, Lioba und Vorhölter, Julia. Theorising Peace and Conflict – An Anthropological Approach. Gulu University Journal, 1(1): 169-178.

Aufsätze in Sammelbänden

  • 2025. In (the) Practice: Pioneering Psychotherapy in Uganda. In: Hutton, Rebecca and Bruun, Mikkel Kenni (eds.). Towards an Anthropology of Psychology: Ethnographies of Psychotherapy and Mental Health Care. Oxford: Berghahn.
  • 2018. Loyalties for Sale – Youth as ‘Identity Entrepreneurs’ in Post-86 (Northern) Uganda. In: Wiegratz, J.; Martiniello, G. & Greco, E. (eds.). Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation. London: Zed Books. (318-333).
  • 2018. Changing Dynamics of Gender Roles and Norms in Post-War Northern Uganda – A Question of Girls’ Empowerment? In: Gomez-Perez, Muriel (ed.). Femmes d’Afrique et emancipation: Entre normes sociales contraignantes et nouveaux possibles. Paris: Karthala. (147-170).

Rezensionen  

  • 2020. Review of “An Impossible Inheritance: Postcolonial Psychiatry and the Work of Memory in a West African Clinic”, 2019, by Katie Kilroy-Marac. Ethos, 48(1): e1-e2.
  • 2020. Review of “Contingent Citizens. Professional Aspirations in a South African Hospital”, 2017, by Elizabeth Hull. Anthropology in Action, 27(1):55–56.
  • 2017. Review of “Neoliberal Moral Economy: Capitalism, Socio-Cultural Change and Fraud in Uganda”, 2016, by Jörg Wiegratz. Forum for Development Studies, 44(3):517-519
  • 2014. Review of “50 Jahre Unabhängigkeit in Afrika: Kontinuitäten, Brüche, Perspektiven”, 2012, edited by Thomas Bierschenk & Eva Spies. African Affairs 113(452): 479-480.

Working Papers & sonstige Aufsätze

  • 2021. Pioneering Psychotherapy: Knowledge-, Class- and Meaning-Making in Uganda. MPI Working Paper 207, Halle: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.
  • 2016. Word Wars –Competing Interpretations of the Armed Conflict between the LRA and the NRM Government in Northern Uganda (1986-2006). GISCA Occasional Papers, No. 5. Göttingen: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. doi: 10.3249/2363-894X-gisca-5.
  • 2012. Jugend und Identität – Auf der Suche nach dem Lokalen in einer globalen Welt. In: COMMUNAUTEN – Kinder und Jugendliche entdecken ihre Stadt. Hannover: Stiftung Niedersachsen. (106-114).

Lehrmaterial

  • Kohlekraftwerk am Nationalpark? Ein Rollenspiel zu Interessenskonflikten von Umweltschutz und Entwicklung in Bangladesch (zusammen mit Arne Harms, Michael Mingenbach und Tom Renner). Geographie Heute, 44: 34-38.

Video Lectures & Vorträge

April 2025: Universality in Pieces (together with Claudia Lang, Hanna Nieber, Hynek Becka, Samiksha Bhan and Desirée Kumpf). Produced for the MPI-Series Talk On. Available online at: https://youtu.be/ixi1Ie2xDoI?si=n450RY_syQzJLmEH

January 2025: Sleeping with Strangers. Produced for the MPI-Series Talk On - 3 Minutes of Anthropology. Available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMK3jx6lDlM

October 2022: Über Schlaf und Schlaflosigkeit in Deutschland/ Sleep and Sleeplessness in Germany. Produced for the MPI-Series Spot On - 3 Minutes of Anthropology. Available online at: https://youtu.be/JdIKL5aEcds (German) and https://youtu.be/eGfYM_1i-TE (English).

January 2022: Rethinking Psychology in Africa: Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Dynamics in an Emerging Field. Produced for and accessible via the online platform Africa in Science (www.africainscience.org/ais_videos/lectures) or on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RGJ6RA3jIU).

Vorträge

(planned) November 2025. For the Good of the Patient and the Good of the Company? Ethics and Profits of Care in German Insomnia Treatments. Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association Minneapolis, USA, 16-20.11.2016, Panel: Ethics and Aesthetics of Good Enough Care.

Sept/Oct. 2025. For the Good of the Patient? (Un)Commoning Insomnia Medication in Germany. Meeting of the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Köln, 29.09.-02.10.2025, Workshop 52: Un/Commoning Drugs.

26.07.2024. Staying Awake with the Trouble: Sleeplessness in Neoliberal Academia. 18th EASA Biennial Conference, Barcelona, 23-26.07.2024, PANEL 145: Mental health and anthropological research: fieldwork, psychological struggles, and neoliberal academia.

31.05.2024. Pillows, Pajamas, and Pacemakers: The Materiality of (Disordered) Sleep. AG Psychological Anthropology Interim Workshop. Halle (Saale) May 30-31 2024.

28.07.23. What Counts as Diagnostic Knowledge? Negotiating Evidence, Experience, and Affects in German Sleep Medicine. Meeting of the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Munich, 25.-28.07.2023, Workshop 9: Knowledge and Affect: Developing the Concepts of ‘Stimmung’ and ‘Atmosphere’ for Socioultural Analysis.

25.10.2022. Sleeping with Strangers – Techno-Intimacy and Side-Affects in a German Sleep Lab. Anthropology Colloquium, Universität Hamburg

02.06.2022. Intricate Interventions – Dealing with Insomnia in a German Sleep Lab. Interim Workshop of the DGSKA Working Group ‘Psychological Anthropology’. Göttingen, 2.-3.6.22.

07.10.2021. (Re)Creating Psychology in Africa: Colonial Legacies, Current Debates, Future Visions. 4S Annual Meeting - Society for Social Studies of Science, 6.-9.10.2021, Toronto (digital).

02.12.2019: Monitoring Minds and Moods in an Age of Global Healthism. Psychotherapy and the Medicalization of Unhappiness in Uganda. Opening Workshop of the Working Group “Global Health”: Evaluation, Improvement and Self-Optimization – Mobilizing Bodies in the Age of Global Healthism. Leipzig, 2.-3.12.2019.

29.10.2019. Crazy Times: New (Dis)Orders and the Emergence of Psychotherapy in Uganda. Public Talk organized by the Latvian Association of Anthropologists. Latvian National Library, Riga.

09.04.2019: Neue Konflikte, neue Lösungswege: Zur Ausbreitung von Psychotherapie in Uganda. Gesprächsreihe zu "StreitKultur" in der Frankfurter DENKBAR.

Sep. 2018. In (the) Practice: Translating, Appropriating and ‘Doing’ Psychotherapy in Uganda. Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth 2018, Oxford UK, 18-21.09.2018, Panel: When Psychotherapy Goes Awry: Theorising the Unexpected in Therapeutic Encounters.

Sep. 2018. A/Effective (Re-)Arrangements? ‘Dysfunctional’ Relationships as a Key Challenge for Therapy in Uganda. Symposium on ‘Affektive Arrangements in Therapeutic Settings’, FU Berlin.

06.10.2017. Neoliberal Capitalism and Psychotherapy in Uganda. Critical Reflections on the Politics of Care. DGV-Tagung (Meeting of the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology), Berlin, 4.-7.10.2017, Workshop 12: Affective practices, belonging, and the politics of care.

10.08.2017. The Emergence of Psychotherapy in Uganda – Mirror or Motor of a New (Dis)Order? Macquarie University Anthropology Colloquium, Sydney, Australia.

29.04.2017. A New (Dis)Order? Neoliberal Capitalism and Psychotherapy in Uganda. Workshop at Washington University in St. Louis, Anthropology Department: Framing (Dis)Orders: Mental Health Institutions as Reflections of Political, Socio-Economic and Moral Orders in Different Historical and Regional Contexts, 28. & 29.04.2017.

11.03.2017. Notes from the Margins of Psychological Anthropology – The (Neglected) Rise of Psychotherapy in Africa. Biennial Meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, New Orleans, USA, 9-12.03.2017, Panel: Reimagining the Clinic: Critical Approaches to Psychotherapy.

18.11.2016. Struggling to be a ‘Happy Self’ – Psychotherapy, Mental Health and the Medicalization of Unhappiness in Uganda Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association Minneapolis, USA, 16-20.11.2016, Panel: (Un)happy (un)healthy: on challenging assumptions of everyday life.

06.06.2016. Class-Based Chronicities in Mental Health Care in Uganda. Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth 2016, Durham UK, 04-07.07.2016, Panel: Anthropology of Mental Health: at the Intersections of Transience, 'Chronicity' and Recovery.

17.12.2015. Of Madness, Morality and Mental Health – Discourses on Psycho-Social Suffering and the Rise of the Therapeutic in Uganda. Colloquium of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Göttingen University.

09.07.2015. Homosexuality, Pornography and other ‘Modern Threats’: Mobilizing Sexuality in Discourses on Social Change in Uganda. 6th European Conference on African Studies, Paris, 08.07.-10.07.2015, Panel 025: Opposing the Liberal West? Anti-Homosexuality Mobilizations in Contemporary Africa.

31.07.2014. Obsession with (Sexual) Change in Uganda – Sexuality as Instrument of Power. 13th EASA Biennial Conference, Tallinn, 31.07.-03.08.2014, Panel 56: Obsession with Change.

13.06.2014. „Youth at the Crossroads“ – Aushandlungsprozesse und Zukunftsvorstellungen von Jugendlichen in Norduganda nach dem Krieg. VAD Kongress, Bayreuth, 11.-14.06.2014, Panel 18: Auf dem Weg. Zukunftsvorstellungen und -perspektiven von Kindern und Jugendlichen in Afrika.

03.10.2013. Theorie vs. Praxis? „Entwicklungsalltag” im Spannungsfeld von Partizipationsdogma und Organisationskultur. 35th DGV-Tagung, Mainz, 02.-05.10.2013, Workshop 13: „Theorie – Praxis“. Entwicklungssoziologie und Sozialanthropologie zwischen Herrschaftskritik, gesellschaftlicher Verantwortung und Sozialtechnologie.

28.06.2013. Rebuilding Society after the War – Creative Contributions by Acholi Youth. 5th European Conference on African Studies, Lisbon, 27. - 29.06.2013, Panel 165: Novel Spaces for African Youth: Creativity, Entrepreneurship and Political Action.

21.07.2011. “The Young People are Losing our Culture“ – Kulturwandel als Generationenkonflikt in Post-Konflikt-Norduganda. DGV Summer School, Frankfurt, 18.-22.07.2011. Thema: Kultur in der Debatte: Antinomien kultureller Referenzen.

18.06.2011. Infiltrating “African values”? Homosexuality, Prostitution and Mini-Skirts as Images of “the Foreign Evil” in Discourses on Gender, Kinship and Sexuality in Uganda. 4th European Conference on African Studies, Uppsala, 15. -18.06.2011, Panel 151: Intimate Engagements: Decolonizing Kinship, Gender, Sexuality.

01.12.2010. Discourses on Culture and Generational Change in Gulu – Perceptions, (Re-) Productions and Transformations of Acholi Cultural Practices and Values among Urban Youth. Workshop at the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies (IPSS), Gulu University, Uganda, 01.12.2010.

14.07.2010. Perceptions, (Re)-Productions and Transformations of Gender Roles and Norms among Youth in Northern Uganda. XVII ISA-Sociology World Congress, Gothenburg, 11.-17.07.2010, RC 38 Biography and Society, Session 4: Biographical Research in Countries of the Global South.

Workshops und Panels

May 2024. AG Psychological Anthropology Interim Workshop (co-convener: Victoria Sakti, Edda Willamowski und Anita von Poser). Halle (Saale) May 30-31 2024.

Feb. 2024. Liberation Medicine: Past, Present and Future (co-convener Amand Führer, Institute for Medical Epidemiology, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg). Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 27–29 February 2024, Halle (Saale).

July 2023. Ethnography of/for the Clinic (Co-convener: Harris Solomon, Duke University). Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, 13.07.2023, Halle (Saale).

July 2023. Doing Psychological Anthropology in Times of “Contested Knowledge” (Co-convenor: Leberecht Funk). Tagung der DGSKA, 25. – 28. Juli 2023, München.

January 2023. The Politics of Living in the Mode of Despite (Co-convenors: Michiel Baas, Michael Vine) Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. January 2023, Halle (Saale).

June 2022. Psychological Anthropology Today: Theoretical and Practical Interventions in an Interconnected World. (Co-convenors: Victoria Sakti and Edda Willamowski). Zwischenworkshop der AG Psychological Anthropology (DGSKA), 02-03.06.2022, Göttingen.

Oct. 2021. The Boundaries of Universality – Contemporary Engagements of Science (Co-convenors: Claudia Lang, Hanna Nieber, Samiksha Bhan, Hynek Bečka, Desiree Kumpf). 4S Annual Meeting - Society for Social Studies of Science, 6.-9.10.2021, Toronto (digital).

Sept./Oct. 2021. Navigating the Changing World: Generational Relations as Resource and Challenge in Times of Crises (Co-convenors: Victoria Sakti and Edda Willamowski). Tagung der DGSKA, 29.09.–1.10.2021, Bremen (digital).

Dec. 2018. Trauma Subjectivities – The Experience and Imaginaries of Suffering in the 21st Century. (Co-convenor: Kenneth Finis, Macquarie University, Sydney). Annual Conference of the Australian Anthropological Society, 04.-07.12.2018, Cairns, Australien. [Förderung durch das International Office der Universität Göttingen]

April 2017. Framing (Dis)Orders: Mental Health Institutions as Reflections of Political, Socio-Economic and Moral Orders in Different Historical and Regional Contexts. Two-day interdisciplinary workshop which I organized as part of my VW Post-Doc fellowship at Washington University, with contributions by Byron Good, Rebecca Lester, Kim Hopper and others. April 2017, St. Louis.