Thematically, Lentz' research focuses on ethnicity, nationalism, the politics of memory, land rights, land disputes, colonial history, the anthropology of the state, elite biographies, the emergence of African middle class, qualitative research methods and anthropological theories of culture.Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, December 14, 2020: CV of Carola Lentz, accessed: 7 April 2023. Her regional focus is West Africa, in particular Ghana and Burkina Faso. After conducting fieldwork in Bolivia and Ecuador (1980), and again in Ecuador on Indian labour migration and changing indigenous identities (1983–1985), Lentz began her research in West Africa. Between 1987 and 1996, she regularly conducted fieldwork in North-Western Ghana (altogether eighteen months) on topics such as ethnicity, the emergence of elite(s) and middle class, labour migration (gold mines), colonial history, and the history of chieftaincy. In December 1996, she monitored the parliamentary and presidential elections in Ghana as a member of an election observer team sent by the Federal Foreign Office. Lentz also has a special interest in Burkina Faso. Between 1997 and 2005, she regularly conducted fieldwork in Southern Burkina Faso, exploring topics including settlement history, land rights, ethnicity and the politics of belonging with the aim to do comparative research with North-Western Ghana. From 2005 onward, Lentz conducted further fieldwork in Ghana in the context of the research project 'States at Work', funded by Volkswagen Foundation.'States at Work', Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, December 14, 2016, accessed: 7 April 2023. In 2006, she supervised the fieldwork of a group of Master's students on work at police stations, courts and schools in Upper West Region, Ghana. In that context she also conducted her own research on the history and the contemporary situation of educational elite(s) and the newly emerging middle class in Northern Ghana.CV of Carola Lentz, Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, December 14, 2020, accessed: 7 April 2023. Between 2009 and 2013, Lentz coordinated a doctoral research group that explored the politics of memory and national-day celebrations in Africa as part of the programme 'PRO Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften 2015' at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. In addition, Lentz supervised the fieldwork of a group of Master's students on African national-day celebrations, initiated in 2010. Between 2013 and 2019, she continued research on the politics of memory, national-day celebrations, nation-building and the performance of the nation and subnational differences in Africa in the context of a follow-up project that was part of the research unit Un/Doing Differences, funded by the German Research Foundation.Munzinger-Archiv Online: 'Lentz, Carola', accessed: 7 April 2023. See also: 'FOR 1939: Un/doing Differences. Praktiken der Humandifferenzierung', German Research Foundation DFG, accessed: 7 April 2023.
