Prof. Dr. Mirco Göpfert

Associate Fellow

Mirco Göpfert is an Associate Fellow at PRIF and Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology. After completing his doctorate in anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 2014, he taught at the Department of History and Sociology at the University of Konstanz before being appointed to Goethe University Frankfurt in 2018. He has led the ERC-funded project NoJoke since 2022.

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goepfert(at)em.uni-frankfurt.de
 Press photo

CV

| since 2022
Professorship for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt/M.

| 2018-2022
Qualifying Professorship for Ethnology, Goethe University Frankfurt/M.

| 2014-2018
Academic assistant at the Chair of Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Konstanz

| 2014
Doctorate in Ethnology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

| 2003-2008
Studies in Heidelberg, Mainz and Montpellier

Publications

  • Dissonance: Cartooning in Iran, Humor, and the Study of Things That Don't Match
    | 2024
    Göpfert, Mirco (2024): Dissonance: Cartooning in Iran, Humor, and the Study of Things That Don't Match, Cultural Anthropology, 39: 4, 645–666. DOI: 10.14506/ca39.4.07
  • On Dictators and Clowns
    | 2022
    Göpfert, Mirco (2022): On Dictators and Clowns, Anthropology Today, 38: 3, 22–24. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8322.12729
  • An artistic reaction to perceived injustice
    | 2020
    Göpfert, Mirco (2020): An artistic reaction to perceived injustice. Cartooning, resistance and textures of the political in Iran , Anthropological Notebooks, 26: 1, 147–166. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4317442
  • Epistemophilic obsessions
    | 2020
    Göpfert, Mirco (2020): Epistemophilic obsessions. Espionage, secrets and the ethnographer's will to know, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 10: 2, 487–498. DOI: 10.1086/709483
  • Repairing the law
    | 2016
    Göpfert, Mirco (2016): Repairing the law. The search for justice in the Nigerien gendarmerie, Theoretical Criminology, 20: 4, 446–461. DOI: 10.1177/1362480616659819
  • Surveillance in Niger
    | 2016
    Göpfert, Mirco (2016): Surveillance in Niger. Gendarmes and the problem of "seeing things", African Studies Review, 59: 2, 39–57. DOI: 10.1017/asr.2016.37
  • Travelling police
    | 2015
    Beek, Jan; Göpfert, Mirco (2015): Travelling police. The potential for change in the wake of police reform in West Africa, Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 23: 4, 465–479. DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12268
  • Ethnographische Überlegungen zu Polizeiarbeit in Niger
    | 2015
    Göpfert, Mirco (2015): Ethnographische Überlegungen zu Polizeiarbeit in Niger. Geschichten hören, verstehen und schreiben, Paideuma. Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, 61, 237–255.
    Publication
  • State violence specialists in West Africa
    | 2013
    Beek, Jan; Göpfert, Mirco (2013): State violence specialists in West Africa, Sociologus, 63: 1–2, 103–124.
    Publication
  • Police violence in West Africa
    | 2013
    Beek, Jan; Göpfert, Mirco (2013): Police violence in West Africa. Perpetrators’ and ethnographers’ dilemmas, Ethnography, 14: 4, 477–500. DOI: 10.1177/1466138112463653
  • Bureaucratic aesthetics
    | 2013
    Göpfert, Mirco (2013): Bureaucratic aesthetics. Report writing in the Nigerien gendarmerie, American Ethnologist, 40: 2, 324–334. DOI: 10.1111/amet.12024
  • Security in Niamey
    | 2012
    Göpfert, Mirco (2012): Security in Niamey. An anthropological perspective on policing and an act of terrorism in Niger, Journal of Modern African Studies, 50: 1, 53–74. DOI: 10.1017/S0022278X11000607

  • Police in Africa
    | 2017
    Beek, Jan; Göpfert, Mirco; Owen, Olly; Steinberg, Jonny (2017): Police in Africa. The Street Level View, London: Hurst Publishers.
    Publication
    ISBN: 9781849045773

  • Policing the Frontier
    | 2020
    Göpfert, Mirco (2020): Policing the Frontier. An Ethnography of Two Worlds in Niger, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. DOI: 10.1515/9781501747236
  • Disziplin und Kreativität an ghanaischen Internatsschulen
    | 2013
    Göpfert, Mirco; Noll, Andrea (2013): Disziplin und Kreativität an ghanaischen Internatsschulen, Frankfurt/M.: Brandes & Apsel.
    ISBN: 978-3-95558-015-5