Anette Hoffmann

Dr. Anette Hoffmann is based at the Institute for African Studies  and sound collections at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her work engages with historical sound collection as sources of colonial history, which include alternative speaking positions and instances of critique, but also pieces of orature and snippets of historical discourses. She has published widely on this topic, and developed specific methodologies to approach these collections, namely close listening and particular practices of re-assembling and reading across archives. Her book Kolonialgeschichte hören(Listening to colonial history) came out with Mandelbaum in Vienna in 2020. The English version of the book will follow soon. On the basis of her project of recordings with African Prisoners of World War I in Germany, she has curated the exhibition War and Grammar (Der Krieg und die Grammatik) shown at the MARKK Museum in Hamburg in 2019, and produced the sound installation Foreign Subjects, which was shown at the Bergen Assembly in Norway in 2019.Anette Hoffmann was senior researcher at the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at UCT between 2011-2015.

Recent Publications:

Kolonialgeschichte hören. Das Echo gewaltsamer Wissensproduktion in historischen Tondokumenten aus dem südlichen Afrika. Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2020.“Close Listening: Approaches to Research on Colonial Sound Archives” M. Bulll & M. Cobussen (eds.) The Bloomsbury Handbook on Sonic Methodologies. 2020.“War and Grammar. Acoustic Recordings with African Prisoners of the First World War (1915- 1918)” A. Deumert, N. Sheperd & A. Storch (eds.) Colonial Linguistics. Oxford University Press. 2020.“Wachswalze mit akustischen Aufnahmen, Sammlung Hans Lichtenecker, Phonogrammarchiv Berlin” I. Edenheiser & L. Förster (eds.) Einführung in die Museumsethnologie. Reimer Verlag, 2019.“Kolonialität” D. Morat & H. Ziemer (eds.) Metzler Handbuch Sound. Geschichte – Begriffe – Ansätze. Metzler Verlag. 2018. “Echoes of the Great War: The Recordings of African Prisoners of WWI” Leon Wainwright (ed.) Disturbing Pasts: Memories, Controversities and Creativity. Manchester University Press 2018.