Research output per year
Research output per year
Karen Blixens Plads 16, 2300 København S
Karen Blixens Plads 16
2300 København S
Research activity per year
My current research focus is on 'certifications of citizenship' in Africa, which addresses the multiple and interconnected dimensions and scales of citizen certification and registration, and the ways in which both formal and informal aspects of identity documents co-produce citizens and states in uneven and contested ways. This work continues a long-standing interest in themes of marginality, displacement, belonging, property, authority and citizenship, especially in contexts of crisis. My initial focus was on questions of land and agrarian change (1997-2012) in both Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Later (2006-2014), I worked on developing a new relational approach to the paradoxes of displacement (called ‘displacement economies’). Eventually I shifted to an explicitly urban focus (from 2012 onwards), exploring aspects of urban displacement and resettlement, urban property, and urban governance and citizenship, with an empirical grounding in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city. This work deepened my interest in the notion of propertied citizenship, read through the interplay between the structural-material, the institutional-political and the intimate-personal. The CERTIZENS Project (see below) takes up these three interweaving dimensions to focus specifically on regimes of certification and identification.
Current research
I am currently Project Leader for a four-year research project (2020-2024) entitled Certifications of Citizenship in Africa (CERTIZENS). The CERTIZENS Project focuses on the logics, policies and practices of different regimes of citizen classification, certification and identification, and different uses and abuses of ID documents, in selected African contexts, and their multi-layered effects both on processes of state making and citizen making. See at: https://teol.ku.dk/english/dept/certizens-certifications-of-citizenship-in-africa/
Working closely with partners in Ghana and Uganda, the Project approaches research in terms of broadly collaborative/comparative aims for knowledge production, combining attention to both theoretical and empirical implications.
Future/ongoing lines of research
Two interweaving lines of research continue to absorb me, albeit so far outside a formal research framework, but with the intention to develop these further:
Selected past research
Past research projects include:
Current primary areas of teaching on the MA in African Studies at CAS include:
Additional teaching:
Supervision
MA thesis supervision
Since 2010, I have supervised over 70 Masters theses on a range of topics. I am especially keen to supervise projects related to: the state/authority, citizenship, identity and belonging, race and decolonisation, political economies of crisis and transformation, displacement and resettlement, property, urban governance and change, critical development policy and planning processes, Zimbabwe and southern Africa
PhD Supervision
I am currently supervising the following students:
Completed dissertations:
Development Studies, PhD
Award Date: 26 Oct 2007
Social Policy and Planning for Developing Countries, MSc
Award Date: 31 Oct 1991
Sociology and African and Asian Studies, BA Hons
Award Date: 31 Aug 1982
President, AEGIS (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies)
Jun 2019 → Jun 2023
Board member of AEGIS (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies)
Jun 2015 → …
Board member of NARN (Nordic Africa Research Network)
2015 → …
Board member, Journal of Southern Africa Studies
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review