After completing a B.A. degree in Geography at the WestfÄlische Wilhelms-UniversitÄt in Münster, Wolfgang Zeller left his native Germany in 1994 on a one-year ERASMUS scholarship at the geography department of the University of Helsinki, Finland. He completed an M.A. degree and wrote a thesis on traditional authority and resource management in Namibia’s Caprivi Region in 1999. He worked at the Embassy of Finland in Windhoek as a research trainee in 1999/2000 and returned to Finland to teach various University courses and chop a lot of firewood. In 2002, Zeller embarked on a doctoral dissertation project on Everyday State Formation in the Borderland of Namibia and Zambia, with financing from the Finnish Academy, the Nordic Africa Institute and the Finnish Graduate School for Development Studies. In 2006, he was a guest Ph.D researcher at Roskilde University’s Department for International Development Studies. In 2007, he was a founding member of the African Borderlands Research Network (ABORNE). The network was awarded 5-year financing from the European Science Foundation’s Research Networking Program, and in 2009 here located with his wife to Scotland to take up the a position as ABORNE’s co-coordinator. He is currently co-editing a book on secession in Africa for the African Borderland Series.
