Valerie Nur (née Hänisch) is a research assistant at the Chair of Displacement, Migration and Social Mobility at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. She studied social and cultural anthropology, sociology, African religions and history in Bayreuth, Basel, Aix-en-Provence and Berlin. From 2017 to 2021, Valerie Nur worked as a research assistant at the University of Bayreuth. In May 2021, she defended her Ph.D. thesis on artisanal skills, mobility and family among Tuareg artisans in Niger at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS). For her dissertation she was awarded the Frobenius Research Award 2022 and the first prize of the German Society for Social and Cultural Anthropology (GASCA) 2023 in Munich. In her postdoctoral project "Gold Connections in Niger" she investigates the new connections, mobilities and opportunities created by gold discoveries in northern Niger.
Her research focuses on technical knowledge and skills as shared practices, crafts, technology and mobility, work and family, gold and gender in Niger and the Sahel.
Publications (selection)
- 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)
- Nur, Valerie (im Erscheinen): Die Unbeständigkeit der Dinge – Handwerk, Familie und Mobilität bei den Tuareg in Niger, Reimer, Studien zur Kulturkunde.
- 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.