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f.l.t.r.: Dr. Valerie Nur, Prof. Dr. Norbert Schröer and Prof. Dr. Angelika Poferl at the award ceremony

BIGSAS alumna and former Cluster fellow Valerie Nur has received the Ethnography Research Prize for her innovative study of craft, family and mobility among the Tuareg in Niger. Based on extensive fieldwork, her research explores how craftsmanship shapes knowledge, social relations and engagement with the material world.

Dr. Valerie Nur received the Ethnography Research Prize at this year’s Fieldwork Days at TU Dortmund University. Awarded by the Sociology of Knowledge Section of the German Sociological Association (DGS), the 1,500 Euro prize recognises outstanding and innovative work in ethnographic social research every two years. This year, the award was presented to social and cultural anthropologist Dr Valerie Nur and sociologist Dr Luis Bastidas of the University of Bayreuth.

Valerie Nur received the prize for her book Die Unbeständigkeit der Dinge. Handwerk, Familie und Mobilität bei den Tuareg in Niger (The Impermanence of Things: Craft, Family and Mobility among the Tuareg in Niger), published by Dietrich Reimer Verlag in 2024. Based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork, the book examines Tuareg craftsmanship as a social practice through which skills and knowledge are passed down from one generation to the next. It demonstrates that craft skills not only enable the production of objects, but also shape how people perceive the material world and the possibilities they have for acting within it. The study thus contributes to current debates on craftsmanship, learning and material culture.

Valerie Nur, née Hänisch, is a research associate at the Chair of Forced Migration, Migration and Social Mobility at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. She studied Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, African Religions and African History in Bayreuth, Basel, Aix-en-Provence and Berlin. She completed her doctorate at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS). She subsequently received a postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Bayreuth aimed at promoting equal opportunities for women in research and teaching. In autumn 2023, she was a fellow at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence. Since 2023, Dr Nur has been a research associate at the Chair of Forced Migration, Migration and Social Mobility at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich.

Her dissertation had previously received the 2022 Frobenius Research Promotion Award and first prize from the German Anthropological Association (DGSKA) in Munich in 2023.