Post-doc: Governance, Transportation & Change

We require two Postdoctoral Research Fellows for the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant led by Professor Paul Nugent entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS). 

You will investigate the process of 'respacing' Africa, a political drive towards regional and continental integration, on the one hand, and the re-casting of Africa's engagement with the global economy on the other, through a comparative study of port cities, border towns and other strategic nodes situated along the busiest transport corridors in East, West-Central, West and Southern Africa. You should have a track-record of high-quality research within a Social Science/Humanities discipline and experience of working in at least one of the four project study regions of Africa.

AFRIGOS poses the question of how far respacing is genuinely forging institutions that are facilitating or obstructing the movement of people and goods; that are enabling or preventing urban and border spaces from being more effectively and responsively governed; and that take into account the needs of African populations whose livelihoods are rooted in mobility and informality. The principal research questions are approached through a comparative study of port cities, border towns and other strategic nodes situated along the busiest transport corridors in East, Central, West and Southern Africa. AFRIGOS, is divided into 5 thematic streams, each of which will be led by one of the senior researchers on the team:

1. Agenda-setting: This stream is concerned above all with how policy is formulated, and much of it will concern relations between national governments, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), the African Union and the European Union
2. Peripheral Urbanism: This is concerned with governance in border towns and port cities
3. Border Workers: this addresses everyday governance emerging through the interaction of officials and others who make their livelihoods through the border
4. Connective Infrastructure: this looks at the transformative effects of new investments in infrastructure
5. People and Goods in Motion: this traces the passage of people and goods and the regimes of regulation to which they are subjected.
   

More details.