Helga Dickow continues at ABI as associate

The ABI takes leave of Helga Dickow as a senior researcher. We wish her all the best for her new phase in life. At the same time, we are very pleased that she is not leaving us, but will continue to be part of the ABI as an associate researcher.

Helga Dickow began working at the ABI in 1988 as a research assistant. In 1995, she earned her doctorate in a DFG-funded research project led by Professor Theodor Hanf on ethnic and religious conflicts in South Africa, Lebanon and Sri Lanka. In her dissertation, she examined the influence of religion and faith both as a justification for apartheid and as a means of fighting apartheid in South Africa. The work was published by Nomos under the title ‘Das Regenbogenvolk. Die Entstehung einer neuen civil religion in Südafrika’ (The Rainbow People: The Emergence of a New Civil Religion in South Africa). As a postdoctoral fellow, she spent several months as a Jill Nattrass Research Fellow at the University of Natal in Durban and at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, now known as Makhanda.

Other positions led Helga Dickow to Frankfurt, where she worked as a research assistant at DIPF, now the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, and as head of department for the Diakonisches Werk in Stuttgart. She then spent several years working for the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (now GIZ) on an education project in Chad before returning to ABI in 2004.

Initially pursuing her research interests in Chad and South Africa in parallel (including a research project on evangelical and charismatic churches in South Africa), she eventually focused on Chad in the long term. Here, she conducted the first opinion poll on ethnic and political conflicts in four cities (2004/2005). Ten years later, she was able to repeat the survey in a project funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation on secularism and Islamisation in Chad. She has also been involved in applied projects for various donors in southern and central Africa. She has published articles in academic and online journals and has been a sought-after interview partner on political developments in Chad. Last but not least, she is a passionate photographer.

Helga Dickow remains active in her projects and consulting assignments. She is also available to answer press enquiries.