Meet the Speakers

We are delighted to introduce our distinguished speakers (alphabetical order)

Dr. Martha Akawa-Shikufa 

Author of „The Gender Politics of the Namibian Liberation Struggle”

Further information: Namibiana buchdepot

Franciska Talita Bangarah

Talita Bangarah is an oral historian and activist from Gibeon, southern Namibia. She engages issues connected with the aftermath of the genocide, concerning specifically Nama and also San. She is the director of the Auta !Nanseb (Hendrik Wotbooi) Foundation.

Prof. Dr. Ullrich Bauer

Ullrich Bauer is Professor of Socialization Research. He founded and heads the Center for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence at Bielefeld University. In different research contexts, he is connected to Holocaust education, the development of programs and impact evaluation studies.

Prof. Dr. Uwe H. Bittlingmayer

Professor of Sociology focus on Education, director of the research institute of the Jugendhilfswerk (Youth Aid Organization)

Contacts

Dr. Cynthy K. Haihambo Ya Otto

Senior-Lecturer: Educational Psychology and Inclusive Education 
Faculty of Education: Main Campus
University of Namibia

Dr. Dag Henrichsen

Dag Henrichsen is a Namibian historian, with particular research interests in central Namibian pre- and colonial histories and in audiovisual archives. He has published widely on Ovaherero history in the 19th century. Since 1995 he has worked at the Basler Afrika

Bibliographien in Switzerland, the largest Namibia Resource Centre outside Namibia. He regularly teaches at the Centre for African Studies, University of Basel.

Contacts

Ida Hoffmann

Ida Hoffmann is a veteran of the liberation struggle and former Vice-President of the Council of Churches in Namibia. Twice a SWAPO member of the National Assembly, she has campaigned for more than 30 years on the issue of recognition, apology, and reparation concerning the 1904-1908 genocide in Namibia.

Dr. Basilius Kasera

Dr. Basilius Kasera, lectures religious and moral education, religious studies and philosophy and applied ethics at the University of Namibia. He holds a Ph.D. from Stellenbosch University, with a focus on contextualization and conceptualization of post-apartheid social justice. His main interests are in moral philosophy, African philosophy, applied ethics, religion and public dialogues, political theology, contextual theology, and systematic theology. 

Contacts

Prof. Dr. Reinhart Koessler (a.D.)

Reinhart Kößler is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology of the University of Education, Freiburg. He has a long-standing research interest in Namibia and for a long time merged academic concerns and activism in relation to the aftermath of the 1904-1908 genocide in Namibia.  

Prof. Dr. Henning Melber

was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek (1992-2000), Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute (2000-2006) and Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (2006-2012), both in Uppsala/Sweden, and remains affiliated to both institutions. He is Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria and the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Commonwealth Studies/University of London and the current President of the European Association for Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).

Dr. Esther Muinjangue

Deputy Minister of Health and Social Services Namibia

Dr. Hertha Pomuti

Dr Pomuti completed her PhD in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Applied Educational Sciences, School of Education at the University of Namibia. She worked as a director of the National Institute for Educational Development (NIED), an institution which is responsible for curriculum design and development for basic education in Namibia. Dr Pomuti’s areas of expertise are teacher education, policy analysis, leadership and management, curriculum design and development. She has served on different committees and governing bodies in public and private sectors and contributed to the body of knowledge through published articles in the areas of teacher education, education management and leadership and education policies.

Prof. Dr. habil. Albert Scherr

Prof. Dr. Albert Scherr, sociologist, works and publishes on discrimination and racism, theories of society and social work. He is co-editor of the journals ‘Soziale Probleme (Social Problems), ‘Sozial Extra’ Issues of Critical Social Eork and ‘Zeitschrift für Flucht und Flüchtlingsfordschung’ (Refugee Studies). As an activist he is engaged in human rights work and solidarity with forced migrants and refugees.

University of Education Freiburg, Institute of Sociology

Email: scherr@ph-freiburg.de

Dr. Charmaine Villet

Charmaine Villet completed her Ph.D. studies in Curriculum and Instructional Leadership at Ohio University in the USA. She teaches in the Department of Applied Educational Sciences in the School of Education at the University of Namibia. Charmaine participated and led prominent studies on educational reform and transformation with the World Bank, UNESCO, the EU, the AU and in Namibia and the SADC region. She served as the co-chair of the International Taskforce on Teachers for Education 2030/UNESCO from 2016 – 2018 and heads the sub-cluster on Curriculum, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education under the African Union’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa/ CESA 2016-25 as articulated in the African Union’s vision of Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want.

Dr. Heiko Wegmann

is a social scientist, historian, and curator. He has published on German colonial history and colonial entanglements in Southwestern Germany and on the Maji Maji war (1905-07) in German East Africa. He is the founder of the ongoing research and educational project freiburg-postkolonial.de