Dr. Anna Wolkenhauer

• PhD in Development Studies (University of Bremen)
• MA in International Relations (University of Bremen)
• MSc in Development Studies (London School of Economics)
• BA in Political Science (University of Hamburg).

Anna Wolkenhauer is a DAAD lecturer at the Institute for Social Development at the University of the Western Cape. She has degrees in Political Science and Development Studies and completed her PhD at the University of Bremen (Germany) in 2020 with a study of the state formation effects of social protection in Zambia. She has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Zambia, and the University of Botswana.

Anna is a social scientist interested in inequality, statehood, rural development, food and agriculture, and social policy. She specialises in qualitative methods and has undertaken research in Germany, the UK, Zambia and Botswana. Before joining UWC, she was a post-doctoral research associate at the Collaborative Research Centre “Global Dynamics of Social Policy” at the University of Bremen, Germany, and interim professor of International Relations and Global Society at the University of Bremen.

Ongoing:

Achieving food sovereignty in Southern Africa: The role of traditional knowledge in the prefigurative politics of sustainable agriculture.

Completed:

Social Policy and Rural Development in Africa (post-doctoral project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—project number 374666841—SFB 1342).

Social Policy and the State in Zambia (PhD research, funded by a scholarship of the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Science – DFG Project GSC 263).

• Wolkenhauer, A., & Thyen, K. (2026). What’s ‘rural’ in rural development? Interrogating internationalised visions for the African countryside. Journal of International Relations and Development, 29(1), 8–31. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-025-00367-4
• Karadağ, R., Thyen, K., Wolkenhauer, A., Penteado, S., & Schlichte, K. (2026). Land conflicts and land meanings in contemporary Africa. Global Studies Quarterly, 6(3), Article ksag106. https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksag106
• Karadag, R., Penteado, S. K. C., Thyen, K., & Wolkenhauer, A. (2025). Decolonisation, socialism and development: The fate of land reform in Africa. In A. Heinrich, M. E. Kaminska-Visser, H. Pleines, & T. ten Brink (Eds.), The generosity of social policies in socialist and post-socialist states (pp. 215–241). Palgrave Macmillan. https://tinyurl.com/yvt4hfts
• Schlichte, K., & Wolkenhauer, A. (2025). Staatlichkeit, Staatsformen, Herrschaftsformen [Statehood, state (forms), forms of domination]. In M. Endreß & B. Rampp (Eds.), Politische Soziologie (pp. 675–678). Nomos. https://content.e-bookshelf.de/media/reading/L-28147617-1e89f04136.pdf
• Wolkenhauer, A. (2024). Knowing and unknowing the countryside: Epistemological implications of rural social policy in Zambia. In F. Anderl (Ed.), Epistemologies of land (pp. 133–144). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377843117_Epistemologies_of_Land
• Devereux, S., & Wolkenhauer, A. (2024). Social protection: Aspirations and limitations of an expanding agenda. IDS Bulletin, 55(2). https://doi.org/10.19088/1968-2024.118
• Wolkenhauer, A. (2023). Everyday sense making and the discursive delineation of social policy space in Zambia. Social Policy & Administration, 57(6), 869–882. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/spol.12974
• Berten, J., & Wolkenhauer, A. (2023). Reflexivity in global social policy: Introduction to the special issue. Global Social Policy, 23(3), 405–422. https://doi.org/10.1177/14680181231202602
• Wolkenhauer, A. (2023). Neoliberalism, social policy, and the state: Searching for the transformative potential of Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer. Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d’études du développement, 44(4), 584–601. https://tinyurl.com/yvt4hfts
• Wolkenhauer, A. (2022). The colonial legacies of copper dependence: Inequality and bifurcated social protection in Zambia. In F. Nullmeier, D. González de Reufels, & H. Obinger (Eds.), International impacts on social policy: Short histories in a global perspective (pp. 119–130). Palgrave Macmillan. https://tinyurl.com/3eje6vu8
• Wolkenhauer, A. (2021). International organizations and food: Nearing the end of the lean season? In K. Martens, D. Niemann, & A. Kaasch (Eds.), International organizations in global social governance (pp. 297–321). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65439-9_13
• Wolkenhauer, A., & Devereux, S. (2021). The role of agents and coercive learning in social policy diffusion in Sub-Saharan Africa (IDS Working Paper No. 559 / SOCIUM SFB 1342 Working Papers No. 22/2022). Institute of Development Studies; SOCIUM. https://tinyurl.com/282vs4tf
• Wolkenhauer, A. (2021, November 23). Social policy in Africa: The root causes of social problems [Review of the book Social Policy in the African Context, edited by J. Adesina]. Review of African Political Economy. https://roape.net/2021/11/23/social-policy-in-africa-the-root-causes-of-social-problems
• Wolkenhauer, A. (2021). [Review of the book Roads through Mwinilunga: A history of social change in northwest Zambia, by I. Peša]. African Studies Quarterly, 20(2), 110–112. https://journals.flvc.org/ASQ/article/download/135987/140399/261882
• Wolkenhauer, A. (2020). [Review of the book Cash transfers in context: An anthropological perspective, edited by J.-P. Olivier de Sardan & E. Piccoli]. Critical Social Policy, 40(3), 494–496. https://tinyurl.com/2a6k8fkc