Dr Alexander Meckelburg
Research Associate – East and Northeast Africa
I am a historical anthropologist with an interdisciplinary background in anthropology, history, and sociology. Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at University College London and a member of the ERC-funded project African Abolitionism: The Rise and Transformations of Anti-Slavery in Africa (AFRAB). My research focuses on the intellectual and global history of abolition in Ethiopia, exploring how the historical memory of slavery interacts with contemporary political and social issues. I am also a member of the scientific board of Aethiopica: International Journal for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies.
Previously, I served as an editorial assistant for the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica and as a research fellow at the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies at the University of Hamburg. I have also been a visiting researcher at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi and the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University, where I was affiliated with the ERC-funded SLAFNET: Slavery in Africa, a Dialogue between Europe and Africa.
Since 2010, I have conducted extensive fieldwork in western and southern Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, the Kenyan coast, and Nairobi, utilizing a multi-faceted approach to explore how historical contexts shape contemporary social dynamics. My research interests encompass the transitions between slavery, abolition, and emancipation, as well as labour, migration, and the trajectories of citizenship in the political history of Northeast and Eastern Africa. I am currently co-editing a special issue on Slavery and the Slave Trade in Ethiopian Studies for the Supplement to Aethiopica Series (Harrassowitz).
My doctoral thesis examines the concept of citizenship through the experiences of minority groups in Ethiopia’s western frontier with Sudan. It explores ethnic integration and the social divisions that have shaped identity in the borderlands of western Ethiopia. Additionally, I investigate the oral memory of slavery and its legacy, considering how Ethiopia’s post-slavery societies engage with issues of national identity, social cohesion, and historical reconciliation.
Major Publications
A. Meckelburg, G. Bonacci, ‘Routes to Emancipation in Ethiopia’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (2024)
G. Bonacci, A. Meckelburg, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade in Ethiopia and Eritrea’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (2024)
T. Merid, A. Meckelburg, ‘Abolitionist Decrees in Ethiopia: The Evolution of Anti-Slavery Legal Strategies from Menilek to Haile Selassie, 1889–1942’, Law and History Review 42 (1), 97-117 (2024)
A. Meckelburg, S. Gebreyes, ‘Ethiopia and Great Britain: A Note on the Anti-Slavery Protocol of 1884’, Northeast African Studies 17 (2), 61-82 (2017)
A. Meckelburg, ‘Slavery, Emancipation, and Memory: Exploratory Notes on Western Ethiopia’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 48 (2), 345-362 (2015)
More publications can be found here.