Dr. Nick Rahier is a Postdoctoral Research Associate affiliated to CARAM (Centre for Anthropological Research on Affect and Materiality) and the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven. Nick has a background in African Studies and has previous experience with organising and coordinating applied projects in Central-Africa in close collaboration with local stakeholders. He has experience as a program coordinator at the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology , KU Leuven, is coordinating a state-of-the-art research consortium on Chronic Respiratory Disease in Africa (RESPIRA), leading a research project on eco-pesticide production in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda, is involved in a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network on the topic of Climate Urgency (C-Urge) which he co-authored together with Prof. Dr. Katrien Pype (KU leuven) as PI and is CO-PI of a project on AI and citizen science for air quality monitoring in Nakuru, Kenya funded by the Flemisch International Climate Action Programme (FICAP).
His Phd research (2016-2021) focused on how urban residents deal with urban change experienced as heat and how heat is mastered, navigated and metabolised to produce more viable futures. It was premised on the core assumption that overheating is the sensory experience par excellence of the 21st century and that more scholarly attention is needed to understand life under hotter conditions. Nick's PhD research shed light on urban life in Nakuru, a vibrant secondary Kenyan city of 610 000 inhabitants situated 160 km Northwest of Nairobi, and was based on 18 months of ethnographic research. Fieldwork focused on how people in Nakuru made sense of their urban lifeworlds, yet did so with 'heat' as a leitmotiv illuminating different understandings about a variety of opposing or cohesive uses, ideas and/or meanings of technologies, symbols, and substances that flow through the city. He published parts of his research as articles or scientific outreach in journals/media/blogs such as, among others, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Cultural Anthropology, City, and Development Economics. More articles are currently under review and Nick is working towards publishing his first book-lenght monograph with UCLPress. Nick is mostly interested in anthropological research on the intersection of technology, environmentalism, the urban, the post-human and health.
Nick is a member of the teaching team for the BA and MA programs in African Languages and Cultures/African Studies. He delivers classes on ethnographic fieldwork and Language, Culture, and Identity. Starting from AY 2025-2026, he will also serve as the primary instructor for the course Anthropology, Africa, and the Anthropocene.
In addition to his commitments as an Africanist anthropologist specializing in fundamental research, Nick brings extensive experience in project management, applied research, grant proposal writing, and consultancy. He is also self-employed as a freelance consultant and has authored reports for the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) under the Knowledge for Development and Diplomacy (K4DD) programme.
