Fesseha Berhe Gebregergis

Currently 
PhD Candidate in History, a Joint PhD programme or co-tutelle between the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France and Mekelle University, Ethiopia

Since September 2022
​​​​​​​Gerda Henkel Foundation Fellow at Forschungskolleg Transkulturelle Studien / Perthes Collection, Gotha

10/2019-11/2019
​​​​​​​Research Stay in Hamburg as a member of the SLAFNET Project (Slavery in Africa: A Dialogue between Europe and Africa), funded by the European Union and coordinated by the IRD

04/2018-09/2018
ETHIOMAP project researcher at the Gotha Research Centre

04/2016-08/2016
Herzog-Ernst-Scholarship holder at the Gotha Research Centre

2006 - 2008
Master in Social Anthropology, Addis Ababa University

2004 - 2005 
Higher Diploma for teacher Educators, Mekelle University

2000 – 2003
Bachelor of Education in History, Alemaya University

The Dobᶜa of Ethiopia

The PhD research project is on the history and identity of the Dobǝᶜa. It focuses on a former ‘ethnic group’ in northern Ethiopia, the Dobᶜa, who are today not known any more as a separate group, but still exist – unknown to most researchers – in the form of lineages in Rayya (southern Tigray and parts of northern Wollo) and beyond, who kept historical memories. The Dobᶜa were a population attested since hundreds of years in most diverse sources, which show that at times they played an important role in Ethiopian regional politics. This is why they have been repeatedly mentioned in scholarly works on Ethiopian history, but never scholars were able to grasp well their ethnic identity and their role in Ethiopian regional politics, while their origin and background plays even an important role in modern scholarly debates, while detail studies on them are missing. This PhD project undertakes the endeavor to document historical narratives and sources and, doing this, has two main approaches. First, it tries to reconstruct their history based on ethno-historical methods, using written Ethiopian and foreign sources (hagiographies, royal chronicles, travel accounts, ajami manuscripts, maps, secondary literatures), and second, evaluates the historical narratives (oral traditions) in a societal-cultural context. Its contribution to scholarship is thus first the work on a ‘modern’ methodology which may help in the better documentation and understanding of local ethnic history, and second a documentation and detail discussion of any available source which helps us to better understanding the history, socio-political and cultural, of these people. This research gives a fresh look at Ethiopian history, which is usually told from the central state or central power perspective. My research is in a way a counter history of the centrist Ethiopian historiography and shows the cultural diversity and the many foldedness of Ethiopian history.

• Local History
• History of Cartography of North-East Africa
• Intermediaries and European Exploration of North-East Africa
• Islamic History and Heritage
• Medieval History of Northern Ethiopia

• "The Agency of the Populations of the Western Shores of the Red Sea in the 19^th Century Network of Knowledge Dissemination", 22.–24.05.2024, Centre for Transcultural Studies, Gotha.
• "The Dobǝᶜa in Antoine d'Abbadie's Géographie de l’Éthiopie (1890)", 19.04.–20.04.2024, Hendaya.
• "August Petermann’s 1869 Reproduced Maps of the Official Map of the British Expedition to Abyssinia", 28.02–01.03.2024, Workshop "Working with Maps", Mainz.
• "‘Equal yet Hierarchal’: Communal Meat Consumptions as Markers of the Duality in the Social Organization of the Dobǝᶜa", 09.05.–11.05.2023, Second Annual Meeting of the German-Ethiopian Fellowship Initiative, Gotha.
• "Some Remarks on the Official Map of the British Expedition to Abyssinia, 1867-68", 12.01.–13.01.2023, Conference Territoriality and its Other, Gotha.
• "An Ethno-historical Investigation on the Dobǝᶜa of Ethiopiaʺ, 20.10.–21.10.2022, First Annual Meeting of the German-Ethiopian Fellowship Initiative, Gotha.

• The Depiction of the Peoples of Abyssinia and Adjacent Regions in Hermann Habenicht’s Spezialkarte von Afrika, in: Christiane Bürgerand/Sahra Rausch (Hg.): Koloniales Erbe in Thüringen, 2024, S. 50–57.
• The Dob'a in Light of Oral Traditions from Eastern and Southern Tigray, in: Alexander Meckelburg/Sophia Dege-Müller/Dirk Bustorf (Hg.): Traditions in Ethiopian Studies (7), 2018, S. 163–184.
• On the Oral Traditions of Ḥašängä and its Environs: A Preliminary Field Report, in: M. Gaudiello/A. P. Yule (Hg.): Mifsas Baḥri. A Late Aksumite Frontier Community in the Mountains of Southern Tigray. Survey, Excavation and Analysis, 2013–2016, 2017.
• Regional History and Ethno-history. Gerhard Rohlfs and other Germanophone Researchers and a Forgotten Ethnic Group, the Dob’a, in:  Cultural Research from Germanophone Countries in North-eastern Africa: Stories and Histories, Extra Issue of Ityopis, Northeast African Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2015, S. 125–135.
• Invisible Diversity. Exploring the Dynamics of Saho Settlements in Tǝgray, in: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, 2015, S. 357–365.
• Youths on Perilous Journeys: Irregular Migrants from Tǝgray to the Gulf Region, in: Les Annales d’Ethiopie (28), 2014.
• Studies on the Biography of Blatta Hayle Mariam Redda (1909-1995), in: IYTOPIS, Northeast Africa Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (1/1), 2011, S. 76–101.