Dr. Valerie Nur

Refugee, Migration and Mobility Studies

Institute of Cultural Studies

Tel.: +49 89 6004-3191

Valerie Nur (née Hänisch) is a research associate at the Chair of Refugee, Migration and Mobility Studies at the Institute of Cultural Studies, University of the Bundeswehr Munich. She studied Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, History, and African Religions in Bayreuth, Basel, Aix-en-Provence, and Berlin. From 2017 to 2021, she was a research associate at the University of Bayreuth. In 2021, she earned her PhD from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS) with an ethnographic study of craft, family, and mobility among Kel Tamasheq in Niger.

Ongoing Research Projects

Living with the Great Fish River

My postdoctoral project explores life along and with the Great Fish River in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. I examine how people develop relationships with the river through everyday practices and learn to perceive and respond to its changing conditions. I am particularly interested in how pollution of the river is perceived in everyday life and captured through digital monitoring technologies.

Book Project: Tamasheq Literature from Kidal (Mali)

INHADAN. Littérature tamasheq en conversation. Kidal, saison des pluies 2009 is a collaborative book project with Alala Attaher and Ehya Ag Sidiyene on the oral literature and linguistic traditions of the Kel Tamasheq in the Kidal region of Mali. The bilingual edition presents poems, stories, proverbs, and sayings by and about Inhǎḍǎn within the conversations in which they are told and interpreted. In this way, different interpretations and contexts become visible.

Awards

Research Prize for Ethnography 2026, Sociology of Knowledge Section of the German Sociological Association (DGS)

Dissertation Prize 2023 of the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology (DGSKA), First Prize

Frobenius Research Award 2022

Teaching Philosophy

The particular strength of anthropological thinking lies in the methodological practice of decentring one’s own perspective in order to understand how others see, experience, and act in the world. This requires openness to different worldviews and ways of life, the ability to understand other people’s motivations, concerns, and visions of the future on their own terms, and an awareness of different ways of perceiving and acting in the world. In today’s world, this capacity is of particular relevance.

Publications (selection)

Nur, Valerie. 2025. “En route avec leurs outils : le travail itinérant des artisans Kel Tamasheq de l’Aϊr (Niger)”, Anthropologie & développement, 56, 85-104.
Nur, Valerie (2025): The workshop at home. Making sense of craft as a social practice among Tuareg artisans in Niger. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie / Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 150(1): 55-76. DOI: 10.60827/zfe/jsca.v150i1.3768
Nur, Valerie (2024): Die Unbeständigkeit der Dinge – Handwerk, Familie und Mobilität bei den Tuareg in Niger, Studien zur Kulturkunde 137. Berlin: Reimer. Die Unbeständigkeit der Dinge

Book cover: Die Unbeständigkeit der Dinge

Podcast: Dr. Valerie Nur and Prof. Dr. Joël Glasman on artisanal knowledge in Niger from a mobility perspective, "Multiple Africa" Cluster of Excellence Conversations "Reconfiguring African Studies", Episode 19:
https://www.bayreuth-academy.uni-bayreuth.de/en/News_Activities/Podcasts/Episode-19/index.html
Nur, Valerie (accepted for an open-access-publication of the Université de Tamanrasset, Algeria): Mobilité et Circulation de savoir-faire artisanaux chez les Touaregs de l’Aïr (Niger)
Hänisch, Valerie (2018): Dinge und Wissen in den Händen von Handwerkern. In: Hahn, Hans Peter; Neumann, Friedemann (Hrsg.): Dinge als Herausforderung: Kontexte, Umgangsweisen und Umwertungen von Objekten. Bielefeld: transcript. S. 167-194.
Hänisch, Valerie (2017): Technical Action in Flow, and the Moment when Kato hit his finger. In: Verne, Markus; Ivanov, Paola; Treiber, Magnus (Hrsg.): Körper, Technik, Wissen: Kreativität und Aneignungsprozesse in Afrika. Berlin: LIT. S. 259-273.

Valerie Nur, née Hänisch, has published under both the surname Nur and Hänisch.