Erdmute Alber (Ph.D. 1997) is chair of Social Anthropology at Bayreuth University (Germany). She has undertaken long-term field research in West Africa, especially in northern Benin. She has directed several research projects on kinship, generational relations and child fostering in West Africa and published widely in the field of political anthropology, childhood, kinship, intergenerational relations and care.

In Transfers of Belonging, Erdmute Alber argues for a new understanding of child foster practices in West Africa. It is based on the elaboration of the history of child foster practices in rural and urban Benin.