Research

Through several projects, the Chair’s research further develops, theoretically and empirically, the growing interdisciplinary field of global/international political sociology. Research includes how state and non-state actors - especially international organisations, transnational bureaucrats and other professionals, companies, and NGOSs and other contestors – transform politics and society in Africa, but are also transformed by the relationships they build on the continent.

We expand two research areas, and promote work on methodological innovation in both:

Global Political Sociology from Africa

• in particular on Africa's South-South relations, and how new institutions and practices of governance emerge from them , locally and regionally, but also globally.

Peace and Conflict Studies/Critical Security Studies

• Sociological conflict research with a focus on non-state actors and business. Previous work includes transnational security governance and the nexus of security and development, dealing with counterterrorism, military interventions / state-building and multinational companies in Africa.
   

Selected Ongoing Projects

Africa's Infrastructure Globalities (INFRAGLOB): Rethinking Political Geographies from the Global South

Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict

Conflicts.Meanings.Transitions (Bavarian Centre for Peace and Conflict Research)

Crafting the space to govern: Non-state practices of legitimation in Africa

State, security and violence in Cameroon - Postcolonial Perspectives on the Decolonization Process under French UN Trusteeship Administration

'In the shadows of autonomy': Decentralization, municipal decision-makers and local contexts in Ghana and Rwanda

Temporalities of Conflict

Postdoc Working Group "Communities of Practice"

Completed Research Works

« Qui ne risque rien, n’a rien »: Conflict, Distributional Outcomes, and Property Rights in the Copper- and Cobalt-Mining Sector of the DRC

Postwar reconstruction in Liberia: Examining the interaction of the government of Liberia, Liberian civil society, and international actors against the backdrop of specific institutions

“Wagner, Bayreuth and the Negotiation of Sacred Meaning.”, Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellow 2020 Dr. Philip Smith, and Dr. Florian Stoll

Postdoc Working Group „Non-Western Actors and Security/Development Practices in Africa: Analyzing the Multiple Relational Processes Shaping Epistemologies on the Ground“