Franziska Jenni is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel, Switzerland. She is part of the SNF-funded research project "Art/articulation: art and the formation of social space in African Cities", which is supervised by Prof. Dr. Till Förster and Dr. des. Fiona Siegenthaler. In her PhD project she analyses the city of Bamako in terms of how artistic practices emerge out of social realities and create social space at the same time.

Franziska Jenni studied Social Anthropology, Art History and Gender Studies at the Universities of Basel and Berne (lic. phil. 2008). She wrote her MA-thesis on the change of representation of African Art within blockbuster exhibitions between 1984 and 2007. During her exchange semester at CODESRIA in Dakar, Senegal, she conducted field research about women artists and their strategies to get access to the global art market. After graduating from university, she completed a two-year traineeship in the South-, Central- and East Asia Department at the Museum der Kulturen Basel. From 2011 until 2014 she continued working at the museum as Senior Curator of the African Department.

• Postcolonial Theory
• Art and Visual Culture of Africa
• Material Culture
• Museum Studies and Urban Anthropology

• West Africa (Senegal, Mali)

Recent Publications

Jenni, Franziska (ed), 2012: Schwebend – von der Leichtigkeit des Steins. Kinetische Skulpturen von Justin Fiske im Dialog mit dem Museum der Kulturen Basel. Museum der Kulturen, Basel.
Falk, Francesca & Franziska Jenni, 2012. Indien im Blick. Schweizerische Imaginationen in vier Konfigurationen. In: Falk, Francesca; Lüthi, Barbara & Patricia Purtschert (eds.): Postkoloniale Schweiz. Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag: 379-412.

Recent Curated Exhibitions

2014    StrawGold – Cultural Transformations rendered Visible (co-curated with
           Stephanie Lovász, permanent exhibition), Museum der Kulturen Basel
2012    Schwebend – von der Leichtigkeit des Steins, in close collaboration with
           Cape Town-based artist Justin Fiske, Museum der Kulturen Basel
2009    Focus09 – Contemporary Art Focus Africa, Off-space Art Basel, Voltahalle