Michael Kraus

Michael Kraus is the curator of the Ethnographic Collection of the Georg-August-University Göttingen.
He studied ethnology, comparative religious studies and sociology at the universities of Tübingen, Guadalajara and Marburg. Subsequently, he worked at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, the Deutsches Historisches Museum, the Humboldt-Universität and the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin and at the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität of Bonn.
He has conducted fieldwork with indigenous groups in Bolivia and Colombia and curated exhibitions for various museums. Together with indigenous partners from Mitú (Colombia) and German colleagues from Berlin and Marburg, he developed the cooperative research project „Objects as witnesses of cultural contact – intercultural perspectives on the history and the present times of the indigenous populations of the upper Negro River (Brazil/ Colombia)“.
His research focuses on the history of anthropology, material culture studies, museum studies and curatorial practices, visual anthropology and the indigenous cultures of Amazonia. Together with Elfriede Hermann, he heads the PAESE subproject “Colonialism as it was taught – the teachings of colonialism” at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Ethnographic Collection of the Georg-August-University of Göttingen.

Publikationen (selection)

“Quo vadis, Völkerkundemuseum? Aktuelle Debatten zu ethnologischen Sammlungen in Museen und Universitäten” (co-edited with Karoline Noack, 2015). Bielefeld: transcript.
„The Perspective from Germany: Steps towards a Dialogue on Objects“ (co-edited with Ernst Halbmayer and Ingrid Kummels, 2018) (https://www.iai.spk-berlin.de/fileadmin/dokumentenbibliothek/Estudios_Indiana/EI_11_introcuction_EN.pdf).
Ulrike Bieker, Michael Kraus, Lioba Rossbach de Olmos, Ingo W. Schröder, Dagmar Schweitzer de Palacios & Stéphane Voell (Hg.): Ich durfte den Jaguar am Waldrand sprechen. Festschrift für Mark Münzel zum 75. Geburtstag. Marburg: Curupira, 2018.
Gemeinsam mit Matthias Lewy: Audiovisuelle Sammlungen: Zum Umgang mit Bild und Ton (co-edited with Matthias Lewy). In: Edenheiser, Iris und Larissa Förster (Hg.). Museumsethnologie. Eine Einführung. Theorien. Debatten. Praktiken. Berlin: Reimer, 2019, 186-203.
Beyond the Mainstream: Max Schmidt’s Research on the Arawak in the Context of Contemporary German Ethnology. Revista de Antropologia (São Paulo) 62(1), 2019 162–191. https://www.revistas.usp.br/ra/article/view/157036
Bedeutungsvielfalt und Reduktion - Ein Federschmuck der Mebêngôkre. In: Allemeyer, Marie Luisa, Joachim Baur und Christian Vogel (Hg.). Räume des Wissens. Die Basisausstellung im Forum Wissen Göttingen. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2022, 220-223.
Developing Fieldwork in the South American Lowlands: Debates and Practices in the Work of German Ethnographers (1884-1928). In: Delgado Rosa, Frederico and Han F. Vermeulen (eds.). Ethnographers Before Malinowski: Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870-1922. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2022, 411-448.

Contact:

Dr. Michael Kraus

Curator of the Ethnographic Collection, Georg-August-University Göttingen

Head of the Subproject: Collecting and Teaching