‘§17 Professur’Dmitry Bondarev Named Professor of African Studies

6 February 2025

Photo: UHH/Menz

Dmitry Bondarev has earned an international reputation for his expertise in West African manuscript cultures. The University of Hamburg has now named him Professor of African Studies.

Manuscripts in West African languages written with the Arabic alphabet have hardly been researched to date. They fall between the chairs of Islamic Studies on the one hand and African Studies on the other. And there are hardly any researchers with the necessary range of skills in philology, Arabic studies, and the sometimes very different West African languages such as Kanuri, Kanembu, or Hausa to be able to study the sources in depth. As a result, cultural areas in countries such as Senegal, Guinea, Mali, and Nigeria are still largely blank spaces on the map of manuscript research.

Dmitry Bondarev is one of the few researchers who possess these special skills and are helping to close the existing gaps. He has been associated with the CSMC since 2012 and has played a key role in establishing its research focus on West Africa, first in the ‘Sonderforschungsbereich’ Manuscript Cultures and later in the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts. He was a central figure in the internationally recognised initiative ‘Safeguarding the Manuscripts of Timbuktu’, which focused on the preservation, archiving, analysis, and digitisation of the holdings of the Timbuktu library threatened by Islamist rebels. Since 2017, he has also been leading the DFG-funded project ‘African Voices in the Islamic Manuscripts from Mali: Documenting and Exploring African Languages Written in Arabic Script’, which will continue until 2029.

In addition to his research achievements, Dmitry Bondarev has also contributed significantly to the training of young researchers in West African manuscript cultures and to the international network of the CSMC. Thanks to his extensive field research in the region, he has first-hand knowledge of local practices and the uses of manuscripts in the respective West African cultures.

In February 2025, Dmitry Bondarev was named Professor of African Studies by the University of Hamburg. This is a title that the University of Hamburg awards to researchers who have distinguished themselves through outstanding achievements and who have been teaching independently at the UHH for at least three years. In January, Imre Galambos, a former Petra Kappert Fellow with close ties to the CSMC, had already received this title.