Nicole Ahoya, MA and MLaw
CV
Nicole Ahoya is a Research Assistant and Lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Lucerne (UNILU).
Before joining UNILU, she studied Anthropology at the University of Zurich and Nairobi where she conducted two research projects involving several months of fieldwork in Kenya. As part of her projects, she investigated involuntary childlessness in Kenya and researched the practices of healthcare managers in the field of medical travel between Kenya and India.
Nicole also holds a degree in Law (BLaw and MLaw) from the University of Zurich. Having been trained in Law and Anthropology, she has a keen interest in suturing the two. Her PhD project, supervised by Prof. Dr. Sandra Bärnreuther, explores the emerging forms of Law Tech in Kenya with an interdisciplinary perspective. She is interested in notions of access to law and justice through the lens of different Law Tech providers. She analyzes how these providers understand “law” and “justice”, how they ensure access to it, and how Law Tech changes the "legal landscape" in Kenya. On a larger level, the project aims to provide an insight into the access to and the perception of legal mechanisms and institutions.
Besides this, Nicole volunteers as a legal advisor in the field of migration and asylum law. Furthermore, she is primarily interested in human rights and their extraterritorial application, health law, and family law.
Research
Research Priorities
Thematic interests
- Medical anthropology (particularly involuntary childlessness, reproductive medicine and medical travel)
- Anthropology of the State
- Anthropology of Law (also the intersections of Anthropology and Law)
- Anthropology of/and Digitalisation (particularly digital health and digital infrastructures)
Regional interests
- East Africa (particularly Kenya)
- Global entanglements (particularly South-South relations, e.g. Indo-Kenyan relations)