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Hugo Knoppert graduated in 2008
He is Coordinator Zimbabwe Watch and Policy officer PUM Netherlands Senior Experts
I always tell people that the choice to study anthropology...
was the best choice of my life.
The study braught me so many good things. .
Not only knowledge but also friends..
inspiration...
interesting people.
During my study I have mainly focused the influence of economical processes on the local level.
This really interested me.
During the study you are taught how to understand these processes.
You are taught how to understand the world.
That is what anthropologists do. They ask themselves: Why do people do what they do?
What are relationships between people and how do people react to things?
The world we live in now is changing rapidly.
It is becoming smaller and smaller.
We get to see more of the world than before.
An anthropologist is the person that can explain all of these changes.
What I loved a lot about the study Cultural Anthropology in Leiden...
is that sometimes during breaks, it felt as if you were in a café.
All students know each other en talk to each other.
The lecturers are also very approachable.
When you visit them, doors are literally open and you can just walk in and talk to them.
I think that this informal atmosphere is very typical for anthropology in Leiden.
During my Master Anthropology I went to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia for 3 months.
This was a really beautiful and interesting experience.
Fieldwork is the final and best part of the study anthropology.
I have conducted research about China and Africa
I have looked at the tsunami of chinese products that are on the market in Zambia.
During my fieldwork I discovered what the value of anthropology is.
And what makes an anthropologist different than others.
During my fieldwork I met a Danish researcher who studied the same topic but who was not an anthropologist.
We went to a market together, where a lot of Chinese products were sold.
He only went there once.
And I went there at least 20 times.
If you talk to people for the first time and see these first stories as the complete truth...
then things turn out to be totally different when you talk to them again.
Especially this deep insight that you get by visting the field more often...
asking more indepth questions and trying to understand what lies beneath...
that is what makes an anthropologist an anthropologist.
This is the added value of anthropological research.
The Danish researcher even used some my data in his research.
I believe that the capability to see things from different sides...
to be aware of diversity...
and being able to switch between different worlds...
is very important in almost all jobs you will have in the future.
I think that anthropology is always valuable, whatever your job will be.
In one job it will be more important than in the other.
In my jobs it is clearly present.
Especially in my work for Zimbabwe.
On one hand I work with local communities
But at the same time I work with large institutes like the EU and Worldbank.
In this line of work, the capabilty to study issues from different points of view is very important.