Claudine Rakotomanana
Assistant / PhD candidate
Assistant / PhD candidate
Münsterplatz 19
4051
Basel
Schweiz
Curriculum Vitae
Claudine Rakotomanana is a PhD Candidate and Assistant in Anthropology at the University of Basel. Before joining the University of Basel, she graduated in the Master’s program: Culture and Environment in Africa at the University of Cologne (2021) where she carried out research on discursive silence as a language strategy to navigate migration processes. A few years before (2015), she graduated from the Master’s program: Population and Development at Université Catholique de Madagascar in which she wrote on Malagasy higher education and its challenges in “current” times. Apart from her curriculum in Development studies and educational issues, Claudine focused a lot on sociolinguistics in Madagascar, particularly on non-verbal cues that hint at politeness theories, indirect speeches and the unsaid in everyday communication.
Currently, her doctoral research, which is generously funded by the Humer Foundation for Academic Talent, deals with mixed couples, namely composed of Malagasy women and French men. The title of the project is “Transnational union between Malagasy women and non-Malagasy men: compelling attraction on sex, affect, money and power”. In that framework, field research in Madagascar, La Reunion and (metropolitan) France is crucial. The goal is to determine expectations, hopes and realities around the idea of miscegenation, and to look at what it entails and changes throughout the course of such relationships. Most importantly, the questions of race, kinship, personhood, age(-ing), care, and intimacy are addressed.
Main Areas of Work
- Sociolinguistics
- Social development and higher education
- Intimacies
- Mobility and transnationality
Regional Focus
- Indian Ocean (Madagascar and DOM)
- Western Europe (France, Germany, Switzerland)