Sabine Jell Bahlsen is the author of the book, The Water Goddess in Igbo Cosmology; Ogbuide of Oguta Lake(Africa World Press, 2007) and of several ethnographic films, including Mammy Water: In Search of the Water Spirits in Nigeria (1991). She holds a Ph. D. in anthropology from the New School University in New York, and an MA from the Free University of West Berlin, Germany.
Dr. Jell-Bahlsen is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Dialectical Anthropology (since 2004), serves on the editorial board of Mbari; International Journal of Igbo Studies (since 2007), and has been a special correspondent to African Profiles International magazine in New York (1994-1996). She has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design (1990-1996), Ball State University (1997) and the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (1996-1997), and has carried out extensive, in-depth field research in South Eastern Nigeria 1978-1994, Papua New Guinea (1996-1997), and rural Germany. Her published articles and reviews appear in the journals Research in African Literatures, Dialectical Anthropology, the International Journal of African Historical Studies, and in edited volumes including The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Nature (2005), Education, Culture and Development (2006); African Spirituality (2000); Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power(1998); Emerging Perspectives on Flora Nwapa (1998); Queens, Queen Mothers, Priestesses and Power(1997); Principles of Visual Anthropology (1996) and Ethnographic Film Making (1988). She has lectured and presented her films and research to world wide audiences and has curated exhibitions of Papua New Guinean art and artefacts in Germany (1998 and 2003).
Her current research focuses on Africa in the Americas and she collaborates with George Jell, a professor of architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, on sustainability oriented landscape and design research.
