Dr. Axel Harneit-Sievers took over the position as director of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung / Foundation's (HBF) Myanmar Office in Yangon in January 2018.
By professional background, he is a historian and political scientist with a focus on African Studies. He concluded his Ph.D. on economic aspects in the Nigerian nationalist movement at the University of Hannover (Germany) in 1990. Thereafter, he worked for more than a decade at universities and research institutions in Germany, including the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin and the then Institute of African Affairs in Hamburg. He joined HBF in 2002, heading the Foundation’s offices in Lagos (2002-06), Nairobi (2006-2011) and New Delhi (2011-2017). Among his fields of interest and expertise are political analysis, development and resource policy, as well as gender issues.
Selected Publications and Editorships:
(Ed., jointly with Dawid Danilo Bartelt) : The New Middle Class in India and Brazil: Green Perspectives? (New Delhi: Academic Foundation 2017)
[link: https://www.amazon.de/New-Middle-Class-India-Brazil/dp/9332704147 ]
The Unthinkable in Climate Change: A View from Asia on Literature and Politics [review of Amitav Ghosh’s book “The Great Derangement”], 02.09.2016
[link: https://in.boell.org/2016/09/02/unthinkable-climate-change-view-asia-literature-and-politics ]
(Ed., jointly with Stephen Marks and Sanusha Naidu) : Chinese and African Perspectives on China in Africa (Cape Town, Nairobi, Oxford: Fahamu 2010)
[link: https://books.google.com.mm/books?id=qj75bAEcSLYC ]
Constructions of Belonging. Igbo Communities and the Nigerian State in the Twentieth Century (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press 2006)
[link: https://books.google.com.mm/books?id=C6CtkzINmOgC ]
(Ed.) : A Place in the World. New Local Historiographies from Africa and South Asia (Leiden: Brill 2002)
[link: https://books.google.com.mm/books?id=f3kfbxlCvP4C&pg ]