Rainer Hatoum studied Ethnology and Islamic Studies at the Free University Berlin and received his doctorate from the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main in 2002 with a study on the Intertribal Powwow in North America. Between 2005 and 2019, Hatoum worked at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, the Free University Berlin, the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, and as an independent researcher, including for the Bard Graduate Center in New York. In a number of research projects, he has worked on the question of long-term partnerships between German museums and various indigenous communities (Navajo and Kwakwaka'wakw). In March 2020, Hatoum started work at the Municipal Museum Brunswick.

Publications

Reassembling „The Social Organization“, in: Museum Worlds – Advances in Research, 5 (2017), 108-132 (together with Glass, Aaron; Berman, Judith).

“The first real Indians that I have seen” – Franz Boas and the disentanglement of the entangled, in: McMaster, Gerald (Eds.): Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations and First People’s Cultures; Special Issue: The Entangled Gaze 2(2018)2, 157-184.

“I wrote all my notes in shorthand. I hope that I will be able to read them”: A first glance into the treasure chest of Franz Boas’ shorthand writings, in: Gleach, Frederic W.; Darnell, Regna (Eds.). Local Knowledge, Global Stage. Histories of Anthropology Annual, Vol. 10. University of Nebraska Press, 221-272.

The Berlin Boas Northwest Coast Collection – A Challenging Vocabulary for cultural Translation, in: Etges, Andreas; König, Viola; Hatoum, Rainer; Brüderlin, Tina (Ed.): Northwest Coast Representations: New Perspectives on History, Art, and Encounters. Berlin 2014, 27-78.

Digitization and Partnership – The Berlin Northwest Coast Collection and the Future of the “Non-European Other” in the Humboldt-Forum, in: Blätter, Andrea; Lang, Sabine (Eds.): EthnoScripts – Contemporary Native American Studies 13(2011)2, 155-173.