Contributor
Jan Jansen
Jan Jansen has a special interest in oral tradition in Sub-Sahara Africa. He conducted extensive fieldwork in the region southwest of Mali's capital Bamako. Jan Jansen’s anthropological studies focus on the relationship between historical discourses and local politics. He has published extensively on local systems of education by apprenticeship and has produced - often in collaboration with Malian scholars and local male elites - numerous text editions of oral history accounts. Jan Jansen’s current research project focuses on the epistemological and methodological consequences of applying new recording and documentation technology, with a special attention for the academic traditions by which the encounter between researcher and informant is constructed. Jan Jansen is editor of History in Africa - A Journal of Method and co-editor of African Sources for African History (published by Brill, Leiden) and Mande Worlds (published by LIT Verlag, Munster/Hamburg).