Events
Forthcoming events | Past events
Forthcoming events
Teaching Africa and International Studies
Three working-group sponsored workshops on 'Teaching Africa in International Studies' will take place in 2013, in Cambridge, London and Cape Town.
The first of the workshops took place at the University of Cambridge on 19 April 2013. A full programme of the day's speakers and themes is given below.
Download the Cambridge workshop programme (PDF document, 120 KB)
The second workshop will take place at Royal Holloway, University of London on 17 June 2013. The full programme is given below.
Further information and registration is available on The Higher Education Academy event page
Download the Royal Holloway, Univeristy of London workshop programme (PDF document, 47 KB)
A final workshop will take place at the University of Cape Town on 26 September 2013. The provisional programme is given below:
Download the University of Cape Town workshop programme (PDF document, 94 KB)
The workshops have been kindly supported by The Higher Education Academy and BISA, through the Working Group for Africa and International Studies. The workshops will result in an edited volume and website bringing together the insights and ideas shared. For updates from the workshops please visit The Higher Education Academy blog.
BISA Annual Conference, Birmingham, 20-21 June 2013
The BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group are sponsoring three panels:
'Fair', 'Transparent' and 'Conflict-Free' Resource Governance Initiatives: Their impacts on local extractive environments and the 'inclusive' development agenda in sub-Saharan Africa
'International development post-2015: From millenarianism to sustainability'
'Re-thinking the Regional Security Complex(ities) in Africa'
Visit the BISA website for further information
Past events
Crowdsourcing Africa
2 April 2013, San Francisco, ISA conference Venture Research Workshop
The ISA funded the pre-conference Venture Research Workshop proposed by Rob Blair in response to the joint request from the BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group and the APCG. The title of the workshop was 'Crowdsourcing Africa: New Communication Technologies in Politics and Social Science' and it was held before the 2013 ISA conference in San Francisco, on 2 April 2013. A very successful session was held, with a range of fascinating papers. For more details of the papers and the follow-up please contact Rob Blair, robert.blair@yale.edu.
Working Group funded workshop
Thursday 19 July - Friday 20 July 2012, Queen Mary University of London
'Post-post' independence? African political thought, contemporary protest and the international.
For further information please see the workshop programme (PDF document).
Somalia: Negotiating the balance between 'African Solutions' and international responses
Wednesday 11 July 2012, University of Birmingham
For further information please see the workshop programme (PDF document).
BISA-ISA Joint international conference
Wednesday 20 June – Friday 22 June 2012, Edinburgh
The BISA Africa and IS Working Group has four panels at the upcoming conference in June.
Thursday 21 June, 11.30-13.00 Session 6 Panel 16: South African in the Global Political Economy
Chair: William Brown
Discussant: Scarlet Cornelissen
Lucky Asuelime and Jethro Abel: Building with BRICS: a burgeoning dynamic for South Africa
Helen Yanacopulos: South Africa: reluctant and aspiring middle power
Stephen Hurt: The transnationalization of post-apartheid South Africa
Timothy Shaw: Towards and IPE of Africa's 'Renaissance': for whom?
Session 10, Panel 5: Governing and contesting African environments
Chair: Carl Death
Discussant: Chukwumerije Okereke
Alice Bullard: Environmental Governance: Interpreting the Events of 1989 via Climate Change
Cyril Obi: Is the Peace by the State Enough? Understanding the Dialectics of the Amnesty Programme in Nigeria's Niger Delta
Carl Death: Planning for sustainable development in Tanzania
Rachel Perks: The Indigenisation of the Mining Sector in Zimbabwe: What Future for Small-Scale Mining?
Session 11 Panel 8: African agency in international politics
Chair: Stephen Hurt
Discussant: Timothy Shaw
Karen Smith: Africa to send troops, food parcels to UK as riots spread
Tom Cargill: African Agency and UK Policy
Scarlett Cornelissen: Neoliberalism's pasts and futures in Africa and implications for development trajectories
William Brown: Still 'agency in tight corners'? Analytical notes on African agency in international politics
For further details of the programme, please visit the BISA web site.
BISA 2011 – Manchester Conference Centre
The BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group has four sponsored panels at BISA annual conference (see www.bisa.ac.uk for more details)
Wednesday 27 April – Friday 29 April 2011
Wednesday, 13.00-16.30
1.1)
Advancing the neoliberal cultural transformation in Africa: Sites, actors, leverages
Working Group: Africa & IS
Convenor: Jörg Wiegratz (Sheffield)
Chair: Jörg Wiegratz (Sheffield)
Discussant: Carl Death (Aberystwyth)
Sarah Bracking (Manchester) Investment capital and tax havens: bringing in neo-liberalism through the bankers' door
Sophie Harman (City) Governing Health Risk in Africa by Buying Behaviour
Nadine Beckmann (Oxford) The commodification of misery: Markets for healing, markets for sickness
Wednesday, 13.00-16.30
1.13) The Emerging Post-Washington Consensus: What Impact for International Aid and Domestic Policies in Africa?
Working Group: Africa & IS
Convenor: Elsje Fourie
Chair: William Brown (Open)
Elsje Fourie (Trento) Modernisation Returns to Africa: Ethiopia's Emulation of the East Asian Model
Lord Mawuko-Yevugah (Athabasca) Democratizing Development? The Politics of Good Governance and Development Policy Reform in Ghana
Rachel Tate (Leicester) Can Development Corridors Now Produce Sustainable Domestic Outcomes in Mozambique?
Isaline Bergamaschi (Warwick) Is a Post-Washington Consensus Emerging in Africa? The Case of the Cotton Sector in Mali
Thursday, 14.30-16.00
4.3) Africa and Theory I: Exposing conceptual limits
Working Group: Africa and IS
Convenor: Meera Sabaratnam (LSE)
Chair: Sophie Harman (City)
Discussant: Sophie Harman (City)
Branwen Gruffydd Jones (Goldsmiths) Patrimonialism, personal rule and other wretched concepts: a postcolonial critique
David Williams (City) Making Agency: African States and IR Theory
Meera Sabaratnam (LSE) The manacles of (uneven and combined) development: can we be released?
Teresa de Almeida Cravo (Cambridge) Perceptions of 'success' and 'failure' in the development community: the cases of Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau
Thursday, 16.30-18.00
5.3) Africa and Theory II: Re-imagining international relations
Working Group: Africa & IS
Convenor: Meera Sabaratnam (LSE)
Chair: Branwen Gruffydd Jones
Disscusant: Branwen Gruffydd Jones
Carl Death (Aberystwyth)
Foucault and Africa: Governmentality, IR theory, and the limits of advanced liberalism
Cyril Obi (The Nordic Africa Institute) Local Conflicts and Africa's IR: Any Lessons for IR Theory?
Julia Gallagher(Royal Holloway) The researcher as protagonist: how to make the most out of difference
Jeremy Larkins (Leeds) Coloniality and the Renaissance Expansion of International Society
Building states and civil societies in Africa: Liberal interventions and global governmentality
Workshop: Department of International Politics Aberystwyth University.
26-27 January 2011
Nigeria: the biggest and the best?
50 years of independence
African Studies Centre, Coventry University, in association with Chatham House are hosting one of the most important academic conferences on Nigeria this year.
Wednesday 10 November 2010
St Mary's Guild Hall, Coventry, 10:00 - 17:30
The aim of this one-day international conference is to bring together leading social and political commentators to review the past 50 years of independence and to examine some of the challenges for the future for Africa's most populous nation.
For further information, please contact Prof. Bruce Baker (Bruce.Baker@coventry.ac.uk)
African Studies Association (UK) Biennial Conference
16-19 September 2010, University of Oxford
Please visit the African Studies Association (UK) Biennial Conference website for more information.
Rural Economies in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Global Politics of Local Change
14 September 2010, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick
Please send a paper title and abstract to Ben Richardson, B.J.Richardson@Warwick.ac.uk, by Friday 2 July 2010.
Africa and the Historical Sociology of 'the international'
26 May 2010, The Open University, Camden, London
Collaborative workshop hosted by the BISA Working Groups on Historical Sociology and IR and Africa and International Studies
Spaces are limited and advance registration is necessary. For registration, contact William Brown, w.brown@open.ac.uk.
Download the workshop programme
PSA/BISA Annual Conference
29 March – 1 April 2010, Edinburgh
The working group is sponsoring the following panel at the PSA 2010 annual conference.
Africa intervened: Redefining sovereignty or emancipation?
Convenor: Marta Iniguez de Heredia
Chair: William Brown
Discussant: Will Brown
Session 1 (Tuesday 30 March, 11:00 - 12:30), Merchant's: Great Hall
Marta Iniguez de Heredia (LSE)Statebuilding challenged: unarmed resistance as a form of reinventing the future
Patience Kabamba (Emory University, Atalanta) Transnational production of local community in the Kivus from the debris of the Congolese State
Mesfin Berouk (Institute for Security Studies, Addis Ababa) Foreign Intervention in the Horn of Africa
Karen Treasure (University of Plymouth) and Richard Gibb (University of Plymouth) The Theory and Practice of Empowerment in Africa: From 'Subjective' Emancipation to 'Objective' Subjugation
Africa has undergone powerful changes in the last two decades, which have created opportunities for development and increasing independence. However, its most recent armed conflicts and pervasive poverty are a sign of how much of the continent is still far back on the road towards greater levels of freedom and social justice. These pressing needs have propelled a series of military and civilian interventions in the form of peacekeeping missions, development programmes and policies for revamping governments, economies and state apparatuses as a whole. Indeed, much of the peace and conflict studies as well as the development literature have claimed that these interventions are a form of neo-colonialism. On the ground, these missions are contested but some also welcome them. A question this raises is whether Africa is still advancing its emancipation today or whether sovereignty is being redefined and new power relations are emerging.
The present panel addresses these questions by analysing several military, development and diplomatic interventions, as they are operationalised on the ground. Emphasis is put on the unintended consequences of these different intervening practices, including how populations respond and how the interventions are contested but also utilised as opportunities to change the social, economic and political landscape.
Please visit the PSA/BISA Annual Conference website for more information.
BISA Annual Conference 2009
14 – 16 December 2009
The Working Group sponsored the following panels at BISA Annual Conference 2009, University of Leicester.
PANEL 1: Global Civil Society in Africa: Critical Perspectives and Practices I
Convenor: Carl Death (Dublin City)
Chair: Stephen Hurt (Oxford Brookes)
Sarah Bracking (Manchester) – Power-sharing, unity agreements and 'African solutions to African problems': comparative paths to 'democratic' governance in Kenya and Zimbabwe
Carl Death (Dublin City) – Power and Protests: Representing Civil Society in South Africa at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit (PDF document, 240 KB)
Clive Gabay (Open University) – Disciplining anti-poverty: The Global Call to Action (GCAP) against Poverty and the MDGs in Malawi (PDF document, 135 KB)
PANEL 2: Global Civil Society in Africa: Critical Perspectives and Practices II
Convenor: Carl Death (Dublin City)
Chair: Carl Death (Dublin City)
Morten Boas (Oslo, Institute for Applied International Studies) – MEND me: violence as empowerment in the Niger Delta (PDF document, 633 KB)
Mark Duffield (Bristol) – Urbicide in Sudan: International opposition or complicity? (PDF document, 300 KB)
Cyril Obi (Nordiska Afrikainstituet, Uppsala) – Selling Security or Engendering Conflict? Transnational Private Security Actors in Nigeria's Oil-rich Niger Delta (PDF document, 120 KB)
PANEL 3: EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements: Power Asymmetry, Policy Leverage and Negotiating Dynamics
Convenor: William Brown (Open University) and Tony Heron (Sheffield)
Chair: William Brown (Open University)
Tony Heron (Sheffield) – Understanding the Cariforum-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (PDF document, 200 KB)
Stephen Hurt (Oxfrod Brookes) – Economic Partnership Agreements: The Southern African experience (PDF document, 130 KB)
Stephen Buzdugan (Manchester) – The internationalisation of the state in southern Africa through regionalism: the SADC and the EPAs within an emerging 'Aid for Trade' agenda (PDF document, 340 KB)
Forum of Young Scholars in International Relations and Water Governance
The first conference of the forum will be held in November 2009.
More information about the project concept.
For further details please contact Inga Jacobs, IJacobs@csir.co.za, or Shanna Nienaber, SNienaber@csir.co.za.
Africa International: agency and interdependency in a changing world
9 October 2009
Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London
This workshop is a collaboration between the Chatham House, Royal Institute for international Affairs and the BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group and is jointly funded by BISA, the Open University and Chatham House. It has two main aims:
- To explore analysis of African political agency in the international system and the ways in which African agency, both state and non-state, shapes a range of interdependent relationships between Africa, the UK and other western powers.
- To bring together scholars working in the field of International Studies and UK-based policy makers in order to highlight the contributions that leading academic research in IS can make to our understandings of African agency in the international system and the key UK foreign policy concerns that are raised.
The workshop is organised into three thematic areas: economy; security and politics and diplomacy. The workshop will conclude with some cross-theme reflection on both the prospects and constraints on African agency in the international system, as well as on the opportunities and obstacles for scholarly work in International Studies to contribute to UK policy-making on Africa.
More information about the programme and presentation summaries
Conference summary (385 KB)
Papers
David Black - Canada, the G8, and Africa: the rise and decline of a hegemonic project? (PDF document, 202 KB)
David Frost - Why there are differences between policy and academic world (PDF document, 109 KB)
Julia Gallagher - Britain 'doing good' in Africa: what opportunities for African agency? (PDF document, 35 KB)
Marcus Power and Giles Mohan - Towards a critical geopolitics of China's engagement with African development (PDF document, 157 KB) This paper will be published in the journal Geopolitics in 2010
Cyril Obi - Transnational Security and African States (PDF document, 68 KB)
Thomas Kwasi Tieku - Solidarity intervention: Emerging trends in AU's interventions in African crisis (PDF document, 78 KB)
Paul D Williams - The Responsibility to Protect and African International Society (PDF document, 61 KB)
ISA Annual conference 2009
February 2009
The BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group sponsored the following panel at the ISA Annual Convention in New York.
African states, development and international relations
Chair and discussant: Dr Helen Yanacopulous (Open University)
Convenor: Dr William Brown (Open University)
Dr Stefan Andreasson (Queens University, Belfast): Indigenisation and socio-economic transformation in Southern Africa
Teresa de Almeida Cravo (Harvard) Hegemonic Legacies in post-colonial Africa: the case of Mozambique
Lord Mawuko-Yevugah (Alberta) The politics of participatory poverty reduction and the (re) construction of development space in Ghana
Dr William Brown (Open University): States, development and the aid relationship: legacies and prospects of combined development
Working Group participants and papers presented at the Convention (PDF document, 70 KB)
BISA Annual Conference 2008
15-17 December 2008
The BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group sponsored the following panels at BISA annual conference at the University of Exeter.
Africa and international studies
Convenor: William Brown (Open University)
Chair: William Brown (Open University)
Discussant: Miriam Prys (Oxford)
Timothy M. Shaw (University of the West Indies) Africa and Global Relations/Studies: Lessons From/For the Continent
Morten Boas (FAFO, Norway) A Funeral for a Friend: Contested Citizenship and Belonging in the Liberian Civil War
Dustin Dehéz (Dusseldorf Institute on Foreign and Security Policy) Ethiopia's Hegemonial Role: Setting Standards?
Political economy of trade and health governance in africa
Convenor: Antoinette Valsamakis (Birmingham)
Chair: William Brown (Open University)
Antoinette Valsamakis (Birmingham) Engaging with the World: Corporate South Africa and the Rise of Non-OECD Multinationals in Global Economic Governance
Sophia Price (Open University) Reforming EU-Africa Relations: A Case Study of the EU and SADC
Sandra J. MacLean (SFU, Canada) A New Scramble for Africa: The Struggle on the Continent to Set the Terms of Global Health
New directions in IR and Africa
July 2008
The Working Group held its inaugural workshop at The Open University in July 2008
William Brown (Open University) Social Development and International relations: reconsidering the aid relationship
Scarlett Cornellissen (Stellenbosch University) Migration as re-territorialization: migrant movement, sovereignty and authority in contemporary Southern Africa
Sara Dorman (University of Edinburgh): State formation and stateness in Africa: studying 'hard' states in a weak system
Emmanuel Fanta (UN University, Belgium): Politics of (non-)integration and shadow regionalism in Africa
Stephen Hurt and Magnus Ryner (Oxford Brookes University): Social forces in the EU's 'Post-Washington Consensus' Africa Policy: the case of South Africa
Marcus Power (Durham University) and Giles Mohan (Open University) The Geopolitics of China's engagement with African development
Karen Smith (University of Stellenbosch)Has Africa Got Anything to say?: African contributions to the theoretical development of IR
Oscar van Heerden (University of Cambridge) South Africa's Experience of the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement (TDCA) with the European Union from 1995 to 2005
Workshop programme (PDF document, 22 KB)
Several of the papers were later published in a special issue of the journal Round Table.
BISA Annual Conference 2007
The Working group sponsored the following panels at BISA annual conference at the University of Cambridge in 2007.
The political economy of transformation southern africa
Stefan Andreasson (Queens University, Belfast): Southern Africa beyond development: potential for a post-development dialogue across the Global South
Stephen Hurt (Oxford Brookes University): The transnationalisation of post-apartheid South Africa
Stephen Buzdugan (Manchester University): The New Regional Politics of Development in Southern Africa: the case of the Southern African Development Community
The role of norms in HIV, water and intervention
Walter Lotze (St Andrews University) The Right, the responsibility and the refusal to protect: humanitarian interventions in Sudan
Inga Jacobs (St Andrews University) Holding the Fugitive Resource Hostage? The impact of Global Norms/Norm Development on Joint Water Resource Management in the Orange and Nile River basins.
Jing Gu (IDS, Sussex University) Development norms and the Private Sector: the Political Economy of Chinese Private Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa
