Of Age-Grades, Heroes and Kings - The Frobenius Institute's Research and Collections on Southern Ethiopia

Sophia Thubauville

Note - This event will take place online via Zoom. All registrants will be sent links to the session shortly before the event.

Members of the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt, carried out many research expeditions to Southern Ethiopia in the years between 1934 and 1974. As a result of these expeditions, their archives hold extensive unique visual documentation of Southern Ethiopia.

In recent years the Frobenius Institute has made great efforts to make their collection more widely known, particularly in Ethiopia.

Sophia Thubauville studied anthropology, African philology and political science at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In 2009, she was awarded her PhD with a thesis supervised by Ivo Strecker - Lebensweg und Ritual eine Untersuchung zum Wandel weiblicher Handlungsfelder in Maale, Südäthiopien. She went on to direct the South Omo Research Center in Southern Ethiopia before joining the Frobenius Institute in 2010 as a research associate and head of the library. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the Society for the Promotion of Museums in Ethiopia and Orbis Aethiopicus.

Adolf Ellegard Jensen explaining his Leica camera to a Ts'amako young man.

From the 1950-52 Expedition to South Ethiopia. Photo by Elisabeth Charlotte Pauli.

© Frobenius Institute, register number FoA 23-Pa42-38