Dr Anne Menzel

Anne Menzel is senior researcher and coordinator of the Master's program "Peace and Security Studies" at IFSH. Previously, she worked as a researcher and academic coordinator at the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script" in Berlin. Other stations in her career include the Center for Conflict Studies in Marburg, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and the Institute for the History of Medicine in Giessen. Anne studied political science and received her PhD from Freie Universität Berlin with a thesis on dangerousness and unpeaceful relations in post-war Sierra Leone. Immediately after receiving her doctorate, she worked for a year as a freelance consultant, primarily for the NGO International Alert.

Anne Menzel’s research combines interest in problems that are considered policy relevant with ethnographic research and sociological perspectives on conflicts and power relations. How do projects and policies in the name of peace, justice, progress, or development relate to the hopes and struggles of those they claim to help and empower? How do nominal beneficiaries make sense of, embrace, or reject the problems and solutions they are presented with by policy professionals? When and how do alternatives to prescribed policies and donor-funded project work become imaginable and even doable? These are key questions that have driven Anne Menzel’s work. Most of it has focused on Sierra Leone where she conducted extensive fieldwork on post-war violence, peacebuilding, girl empowerment, and transitional justice. Anne Menzel is currently developing a new project that brings these questions and perspectives to professional prevention and especially anti-racism initiatives in Germany.

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