Tanja Hendriks

Tanja Hendriks is an assistant professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University and a research affiliate with the African Studies Centre Leiden. Trained as an anthropologist, she is broadly interested in the anthropology of the state, bureaucracy, development, disasters and humanitarianism. Her current VENI project is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and focuses on the moral grounding of future-oriented disaster governance practices. It is entitled ‘Taking a Risk on Disasters: speculative humanitarianism amidst a changing climate in Malawi’.

Before returning to Leiden, Tanja completed a postdoctoral research project at KU Leuven, funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). Entitled ‘Duty and Diligence in Disaster: civil servants and the climate crisis in Malawi’, the project explored the aspirations, motivations and obligations of Malawian civil servants and how they understand and perform their duties in times of disaster. This postdoc project built on Tanja’s PhD research (2018 – 2023), which was part of the EU-funded ANTHUSIA project, during which she was based at both the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh and the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her PhD thesis, ‘‘The Malawi State in Relief: An ethnography of civil servants navigating duties, dependencies and disasters in a rural district’, focused on the role of Malawian civil servants in disaster relief interventions in the country and highlighted their sense of duty. Tanja obtained her PhD in September 2022, after passing her VIVA with no corrections.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology (2012) and a master’s degree in International Development Studies (2015) from the University of Amsterdam. For the latter she conducted fieldwork in Burundi, focusing on primary school-aged children and the intergenerational transmission of violence and resilience. In 2016 she graduated from Leiden University, having completed the Research Master African Studies. Her research for this programme took place in Malawi, where she explored (former) street youth’s conceptions and perceptions of ‘home’. Her thesis, "Home is always home". (Former) Street Youth in Blantyre, Malawi, and the Fluidity of Constructing Home. won the Africa Thesis Award 2016 and Tanja is currently the chair of the Africa Thesis Award jury.

Between August 2016 - 2018 she worked at the ASCL as a junior researcher on labour relations and informal workers’ organizations in the informal economy in Accra, Ghana as part of the NWO-funded project: ‘Increasing Political Leverage of Informal and Formal Workers’ Organizations for Inclusive Development: The cases of Ghana and Benin’.

Keywords: Anthropology of the state, bureaucracy, development, disasters, humanitarianism, linguistic anthropology, storytelling, ethnography, labour relations.