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Roland Josef Hardenberg (born 1967 in Münster, Westphalia) is a German professor for Social and Cultural Anthropology. From 2009 to 2016 he was director of the Department of Ethnology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and from 2013 to 2017 deputy spokesperson of the CRC 1070 "ResourceCultures: Socio-cultural dynamics in the use of resources". In October 2016, he moved to a professorship for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and took over as director of the Frobenius Institute in 2017. From 2017 to 2020, he was also managing director of the Institute for Ethnology at the Goethe University. Together with Holger Jebens he publishes the scientific journal Paideuma: Journal of Cultural Anthropology. Hardenberg studied Ethnology, Modern History, Political Science and Southeast Asian Studies at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster from 1988 to 1990 (Undergraduate), at Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University) from 1990 to 1991 (Diploma of Advanced Studies) and at the Free University of Berlin from 1991 to 1994 (Magister Artium). In 1998 he received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin with a thesis on "The Rebirth of the Gods: Ritual and Society in Orissa" and was subsequently a research assistant in the Department of Ethnology. In 2001, he moved to the South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg, where he continued as a research assistant until 2005. In 2006 he habilitated at the Westphalian Wilhelm University of Münster. The title of his habilitation thesis is "Children of the Earth Goddess: Society, Marriage and Sacrifice in the Highlands of Orissa". From 2006 to 2007, he was substitute professor at the Ethnological Institutes of the Free University of Berlin and the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. From 2007 to 2009 he headed the research project "Burial Cultures in Kyrgyzstan". In 2009, he accepted the offer of a W3 professorship at the Department of Ethnology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, where he taught and headed the department until September 2016.
