Gerd Baumann

Gerd Baumann (1953) studied ethnomusicology at the University of Cologne and social anthropology at the Queen's University of Belfast and the University of Oxford. After appointments at the Universities of Oxford and London, a Readership at Brunel The University of West London, and a visiting professorship at the University of New Mexico, he joined the staff of the Research Centre Religion and Society, University of Amsterdam, in 1993.

Baumann's first field research was focused on processes of islamization and nation building in the Sudan and resulted in the monograph 'National Integration and Local Integrity' (Oxford University Press 1987). His second field study (1986-91) was among South Asian, Afro-Caribbean and Irish migrants in London and focused on the study of cross-community interactions. His monograph 'Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London' (Cambridge University Press 1996) analyses the use of multiple discourses in the negotiation of cultural identifications. In the textbook 'The Multicultural Riddle: Re-Thinking National, Ethnic and Religious Identities' (Routledge 1999; Spanish transl. Paidos 2001; Italian transl. Mulino 2003), the discourse approach to culture is applied to current theories and models of multiculturalism in a comparative perspective. An international research project on 'State, School and Ethnicity' is waiting to go into print, co-edited with three colleagues in Britain, France and Germany, as: 'Civil Enculturation: Nation-State, School, and Ethnic Difference in Four European Countries' (Berghahn 2003; German transl. Waxmann 2002). Baumann's current work is to prepare an edited collection entitled: 'Grammars of Identity/Alterity: A Structural Approach' (Berghahn 2004).

Baumann's other work includes publications in ethnomusicology, development studies, the anthropology of ritual and religion, and the edited collections: 'The Written Word: Literacy in Transition (Oxford University Press 1986); with Thijl Sunier: 'Post-Migration Ethnicity: Cohesion, Commitments, Comparison' (Het Spinhuis 1996) and, with Wendy James and Douglas Johnson: 'Juan Maria Schuver's Travels in North East Africa, 1880-1883' (Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society 1996).