Johanna M. Wetzel

Johanna is a graduate of the M.Phil. in Development Studies at the University of Oxford, where she specialized in African studies, life history methods and the history and politics of youth. Her research interests lie in southern Africa and particularly Mozambique, the global and transnational history of ideas and young biographies.

Johanna Wetzel is currently working on a dissertation with the working title: „(Mis)understanding the Young – Youth and Political Subjectivity in Maputo, Mozambique”

This PhD project inquires into the processes through which youth political subjectivities are produced among urban, marginal youths in Mozambique’s capital Maputo. Using a combination of life history interviews and ethnography, I study the points at which ordinary youths encounter or imagine the state and other forms of authority in their every-day life and produce political subjectivities in relation to them. I supplement this through a historical perspective on the effects of past youth political subjectivities. To this end, I analyse public discourses of youth, national belonging, and personal aspiration and development, and how they are passed on between generations.