U. (Uros) Kovac, PhD
Postdoctoral ResearcherHe/Him
E-mail:
u.kovac rug.nl
Expertise
I am a social anthropologist writing about youth, gender, migration, religion, and development, often through the prism of sports in Africa.
As a postdoc at the "Muscular Faith Africa" research project, funded by an ERC grant and based at the SOAS University of London (2026-), I am working with aspiring long-distance runners in northwest Kenya to examine how young people draw on sports and religion to find meaning, purpose, and social mobility. The key goal is to challenge accounts of Africa and Africans as marginal or peripheral actors on the global stage, and to counter romanticized revelations of east African bodies as predisposed to athletic excellence.
My Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral project (2023-2025), based at the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization, was entitled “JANUSHOPE: Two-Faced Hopes.” It investigated the intersection of football, migration, and religion among African migrants in Europe in order to study hope. The project turned to African migrants who hope to sign contracts with European football clubs to understand how their faith-based narratives of hope might both critique and reproduce inequalities of global sport, global capitalism, and transnational migration.
My first monograph, The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon (2022), is an ethnography of young men in west Africa who aspire to migrate by becoming football players, and examines formations of gender through sports and religion. It explores relations between neoliberalism, Pentecostalism, masculinity, and the commercialization of sports, and counters simplistic assumptions of a crisis of masculinity in Africa and elsewhere.
Results of my research on football-related migrations in west Africa and Europe also appear in JRAI: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2026), Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2025), Africa (2024), Anthropological Quarterly (2021), Comparative Studies in Society and History (2018), and Sport, Migration, and Gender in the Neoliberal Age (2021).
As a postdoctoral researcher at the “Future Rural Africa” Collaborative Research Centre, based at the University of Cologne (2018-2021), I conducted ethnographic and archival research on gender and religion in Kenya’s Rift Valley, but also on development and ethnicity among Kenyan long-distance runners. This research examines relations between environment, infrastructure, and professional sports, and challenges dominant paradigms of Africans’ agency in global capitalism, namely paradigms that assume marginality, dependence, and subjection. It was published in JRAI: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2023), Ethnos (2023), Journal of Eastern African Studies (2023), Africa Spectrum (2023), and African Futures in the Making (2026).
I have also written short articles and opinion pieces on migration, religion, and sports for The Conversation (2026, 2016), Africa Is A Country (2024), and The Religion Factor (2024).
As a postdoc at the "Muscular Faith Africa" research project, funded by an ERC grant and based at the SOAS University of London (2026-), I am working with aspiring long-distance runners in northwest Kenya to examine how young people draw on sports and religion to find meaning, purpose, and social mobility. The key goal is to challenge accounts of Africa and Africans as marginal or peripheral actors on the global stage, and to counter romanticized revelations of east African bodies as predisposed to athletic excellence.
My Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral project (2023-2025), based at the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization, was entitled “JANUSHOPE: Two-Faced Hopes.” It investigated the intersection of football, migration, and religion among African migrants in Europe in order to study hope. The project turned to African migrants who hope to sign contracts with European football clubs to understand how their faith-based narratives of hope might both critique and reproduce inequalities of global sport, global capitalism, and transnational migration.
My first monograph, The Precarity of Masculinity: Football, Pentecostalism, and Transnational Aspirations in Cameroon (2022), is an ethnography of young men in west Africa who aspire to migrate by becoming football players, and examines formations of gender through sports and religion. It explores relations between neoliberalism, Pentecostalism, masculinity, and the commercialization of sports, and counters simplistic assumptions of a crisis of masculinity in Africa and elsewhere.
Results of my research on football-related migrations in west Africa and Europe also appear in JRAI: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2026), Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2025), Africa (2024), Anthropological Quarterly (2021), Comparative Studies in Society and History (2018), and Sport, Migration, and Gender in the Neoliberal Age (2021).
As a postdoctoral researcher at the “Future Rural Africa” Collaborative Research Centre, based at the University of Cologne (2018-2021), I conducted ethnographic and archival research on gender and religion in Kenya’s Rift Valley, but also on development and ethnicity among Kenyan long-distance runners. This research examines relations between environment, infrastructure, and professional sports, and challenges dominant paradigms of Africans’ agency in global capitalism, namely paradigms that assume marginality, dependence, and subjection. It was published in JRAI: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2023), Ethnos (2023), Journal of Eastern African Studies (2023), Africa Spectrum (2023), and African Futures in the Making (2026).
I have also written short articles and opinion pieces on migration, religion, and sports for The Conversation (2026, 2016), Africa Is A Country (2024), and The Religion Factor (2024).
Laatst gewijzigd:10 september 2026 12:35