Melina C. Kalfelis studied ethnology, psychoanalysis, and political science at Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. Her Master’s thesis concentrates on the life world of local actors in Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Burkina Faso and their precarious life situation. Some of her results are published in her article “Flexibel aus Armut” in the journal Paideuma in 2015. Since December 2015 Melina C. Kalfelis has been a Fellow Researcher in the new collaborative research centre “Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes” located at the Goethe-University Frankfurt and associated with the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen. For her PhD, she puts an emphasis on biographies of local NGO-actors, the history of local NGOs in Burkina Faso, and their relationship with international donors. Another emphasis is local poverty concepts and discourses of development.
