University of Cologne
Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology
Africa Research Center

Jennerstraße 8
50823 Cologne

Tel.  +49 (0)221 55 66 80
Fax  +49 (0)221 55 02 303

The Africa Research Center is a department of the Institute for Prehistory and Early History. Two permanent employees and numerous temporary researchers are currently working on nine research and data management projects in Germany, France, Egypt, Namibia, Chad, North Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Three of these projects are part of the Priority Program SPP 2143 "Entangled Africa: Inner-African Relations between the Rainforest and the Mediterranean (approx. 6000 to 500 years ago)", funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Three other projects receive individual DFG funding, and one each is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, the German Digital Library, and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

In addition to research, the Research Center for Africa is involved in university teaching as part of the Cologne BA and MA programs of the Institute for Prehistory and Early History, as well as in the interdisciplinary English-language master's programs Culture and Environment in Africa and Environmental Archaeology (in cooperation with Cairo University).

The Research Center for Africa is a member of the Cologne African Studies Center (CASC).

The Africa Research Center's partner is the Heinrich Barth Institute e. V. (Cologne). The common goal is to promote and carry out interdisciplinary research on the archaeology and environmental history of Africa in the spirit of applied cultural studies. As part of this collaboration, 39 books have been published to date in the three series Africa Praehistorica, Africa Explorata, and Colloquium Africanum, which are also published in-house.