Team > Prof. Dr. Joël Glasman

Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
Professur für Geschichte mit dem Schwerpunkt Geschichte Afrika

Aktuelle Ämter (Auswahl)

• Seit 2024: Mitglied des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris
• Seit 2024: Mitglied in der Jury des Gerda Henkel Preises (Düsseldorf)
• Seit 2023: Mitglied im Kuratorium des Historischen Kollegs (München)
• Seit 2023: Mitglied im Steering Committee des Instituts für Afrikastudien (IAS)
• Seit 2022: PI im BMBF-Network 'Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict. Section Security and Intervention'
• Seit 2020: Ko-Koordinator des MA-Studiengangs Global History (mit Prof. Kristin Skottki)
• Seit 2020: PI im Forschungszentrum Gesellschaft, Technik und Ökologie in Afrika, Herausforderungen im 21. Jahrhundert.
• Seit 2019: PI im EXC2052: Exzellenzcluster Africa Multiple: Reconfiguring African Studies

Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
Professur für Geschichte mit dem Schwerpunkt Geschichte Afrika

I am a historian of contemporary Africa from a global perspective and a professor at the University of Bayreuth. My work focuses on the history of the colonial and postcolonial state, the history of humanitarianism, and theory and practice of global history. The epistemological core of my work is based on a combination of practice theory and global historical approaches. My research interests are the fault lines of social conflict, especially the performative categories that institutions use to describe societies, make social differences legible and justify intervention.

My first monograph, Les corps habillés au Togo. Genèse coloniale des métiers de police (Karthala 2015), focuses on the history of African soldiers and policemen in colonial Togo and during the first years of independence until the 1963 coup d'état. Togo was one of the first countries in Africa to transition to a military regime. The book examines the social, economic and political history of this social group. It argues against the teleology of the 'professionalisation' of the African police and army and debunks ill-informed notions of colonial policing such as ‘martial races’, ‘mercenaries’ and ‘colonial intermediaries’. I argue that colonial soldiers were perceived by the population not only as violent workers, but also as a dominated social group within the state apparatus. They were brutal, but in some ways closer to some categories of the rural and peri-urban population than to the urban bourgeois elite. Thus their own aspirations for social advancement could resonate with the aspirations of marginalised groups. Against the backdrop of the return to military rule in several African countries in recent years, the themes explored in this book have been the subject of intense debate. I have published several articles on colonial policing, army rule and bureaucrats in uniform (Journal of Africa History, History in Africa, Sociologus, Politique Africaine), some of them in collaboration with historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists.

My second monograph, Minimal Humanity. Humanitarianism and the Quantification of Human Needs (Routledge 2020) explores the notion of “basic needs” that has become the cornorstone of humantiarian expertise. Humanitarian organisations and NGOs rely heavily on statistics to assess the needs of people in emergency situations (i.e. the numbers of refugees, displaced persons, malnourished children, etc.). They measure needs along standard definitions that set a minimalist version of humanity – both in the sense that they are narrow in what they compare, and that they set a low bar for satisfaction. Why do humanitarian orgnasation cherish quantification? Some authors argue that it is because of a process of bureaucratisation that has happened over the last 30 years. Others argue that quantification is the result of a neoliberal poltics and the diffusion of the technique of new public management. This book attempts to move beyond this controversy by adding another piece to the puzzle: the reflexive capacity of humanitarian actors. Far from being the passive puppets of macroscopic processes such as bureaucratisation and neo-liberalisation, humanitarian actors have themselves decided, at key moments in their history (the Second World War, decolonisation, the war in Biafra, the genocide in Rwanda, the Central African crisis), to codify and quantify relief work. I argue that humanitarian actors themselves have strongly associated specific quantification techniques (measuring malnutrition, registering refugees, standardising needs) with ethical, moral and philosophical values (such as 'impartiality', 'transparency', 'universality', etc.). The book unpacks important but largely forgotten debates that led to these quantification choices. It has been awarded the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award Winner 2020 and has been reviewed among other in Africa Spectrum, The African Studies Review, Politique Africaine, Liens Socio, The Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict. In 2024, the International Review of the Red Cross dedicated a discussion forum to this monograph. This research on the role of knowledge and statistics in humanitarian governmentality has also led to other papers and discussions, including in the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, Humanitarian Alternatives, Humanity, the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Zeitschrift für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung.

My latest monograph, Les humanités humanitaires. Petit manuel d'autodéfense à l'usage de volontaires (Humanitarian Humanities. A Self-Defence Kit for Volunteers) (Les Belles Lettres 2023, translation in preparation with Oxford Comma) aims to make social science research more accessible to humanitarian workers and volunteers. While normative knowledge (law, management, economics, logistics) has been widely disseminated within humanitarian organisations through manuals and standards, critical knowledge (including anthropology, sociology and history) is still more difficult to access and remains the preserve of an expert community. This book provides an introduction to key debates on humanitarian aid and neoliberalism, war, corruption, genocide, refugee camps, epidemics, racism, feminism, statistics and climate change. It is both a toolkit for the humanitarian humanities and a plea for the use of critical knowledge in action. I was awarded the Research Prize of the Fondation of the French Red Cross 2024 for this book.

Another field of interest is the theory and practice of global history. I have explored several theoretical challenges at the intersection of global history and the theory of practices. Together with Debora Gerstenberger, I have co-edited a book on the use of Actor-Network-Theories (ANT) for global history: Techniken der Globalisierung. Globalgeschichte meets Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (Bielefeld 2016). The book offers a STS-based critique of the concept of “global” in “global history”, as well as a conceptual proposal for moving forward. Furthermore, I propose a praxis-theoretical definition of colonialism, leading to the notion that the colonial state was first and foremost a classification machine (‘Was war Kolonialismus? Zur Vergangenheit der globalen Gegenwart’, Einsichten und Perspektiven 2023). I have tried to show why global history is more relevant than ever for European citizens, whose traditional school curricula have largely ignored non-European history. (‘Wieviel Globalgeschichte verträgt der Lehrplan. Plädoyer für eine Revolution, Geschichte für heute 2025). I have also argued for the defence of global history as a sub-field of history, in the context of growing attacks on academia by right-wing extremist parties. Again, praxis theory can provide useful tools to defend what historians want to do. (Wer hat Angst vor der Globalgeschichte? Aktivismus und ‘Außereuropa‘ aus feldtheoretischer Sicht‘Geschichte und Gesellschaft 2025).

At the University of Bayreuth, I am a co-coordinator, together with Prof. Kristin Skottki, of the Master’s programm in Global History, and member of the Steering Committee of the Institut for African Studies (IAS). I am one of the Principal Investigators of the Cluster of Excellence Africa Multiple: Reconfiguring African Studies as well as of the Forschungszentrum Gesellschaft, Technik und Ökologie in Afrika. Herausforderungen im 21. Jahrhundert (FZA) and the BMBF network Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict. Outside of Bayreuth, I am also a member of the Kuratorium of the Historisches Kolleg in Münich, a member of the Prize of Gerda Henkel Stiftung and a member of the Wissenschaftlicher Beirat des DHIP (Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris).

Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
Professur für Geschichte mit dem Schwerpunkt Geschichte Afrika

Publikationen

Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
Professur für Geschichte mit dem Schwerpunkt Geschichte Afrika

Prof. Dr. Joël Glasman
Professor für Geschichte mit dem Schwerpunkt Geschichte Afrikas​

Besucher*innenadresse:
Gebäude GW II Raum 2.14
Universitätsstraße 30
D-95447 Bayreuth

Postanschrift:
Universität Bayreuth
D-95440 Bayreuth

E-Mail: joel.glasman@uni-bayreuth.de