NAB XVIII 2019

Emerging Scholars
Every Day Mlawi Shawarma ...
Text and Photos MIRJAM STRASSER
The Summer School
in
Sousse premiered in late September
2019 bringing German students
to the Tunisian coastal town for
the fi rst time.
Th e University of Sousse, or more specifically,
the Faculty of Letters and Human
Sciences (FLSH) and its Centre
d’Anthopologie – African Studies, and
the Institute of African Studies (IAS) of
the University of Bayreuth (UBT) are
connected through a longstanding partnership.
Over the past few years, several
lecturers from Bayreuth have gone to
Sousse to teach Master as well as PhD
students from Sousse, who in turn regularly
have come to Bayreuth to participate
in the African Studies course during
the Bayreuth International Summer
School (BISS). Th anks to the German
Academic Exchange Service (DAAD),
74
this exchange programme enabled Tunisian
students to learn more about living
and studying in Germany. Because the
BISS was developed for international
students, participants from Germany
seldom took part in it, and an exchange
between Tunisian and German students
had been neglected. With the application
for the DAAD programme “German-Arab
Transformation Partnership
2019: short-term measures”, the IAS
intended to change this, and wanted to
bring UBT students to its partner institution
in Sousse for the fi rst time.
DAAD was convinced and approved the
organizers’ application. Numerous students
from different Master programmes
in the African Studies at the UBT also
applied to participate in the two-week
summer school “African Studies in Tunisia—Methodologies
and Current Issues”
at the University of Sousse. In a joint
German-Tunisian selection procedure,
the four most compelling applicants
were selected and invited to travel to Tunisia
from 29 September to 12 October
2019.
Th e summer school, as part of a broader
exchange programme funded by the German
Academic Exchange Service and the
Federal Foreign Office, consisted of two
parts. In the fi rst week, the participants
– 15 second year students of the MA programme
“African Studies” at the University
of Sousse and the four students of the
MA programmes “Culture and Society of
Africa”, “Cultural and Social Anthropology”
and “Development Studies” at the
UBT – could broaden their knowledge
of research design and methodologies
in social sciences and humanities. Th eir
lecturers, both alumnae of the Bayreuth
International Graduate School of African
Studies (BIGSAS), Valerie Hänsch,
(LMU München), and Alžběta Šváblová
(UBT), taught them which different research
methods exist and encouraged
them to use these methods within a small
fi eld research. Working in mixed groups
of four, the students spent one day in the
medina (old town) of Sousse
and collected data about different
kinds of traditional and
modern arts and craft s and
presented their experiences
and results to the other participants.
In the second week, Serawit
Bekele Debele, BIGSAS
The IAS organised the first Summer
School in Sousse, Tunisia,
bringing together participants
from Tunisia and Germany.