Speakers
Benjamin Schuetze
Benjamin Schuetze is Senior Researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser
Institute (ABI) in Freiburg and a member in the Young Academy for
Sustainability Research at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
(FRIAS). His research focuses on the political economy of renewable
energies and the politics of intervention in the MENA. He is the
author of ‘Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism: US and
European Policy in Jordan’ (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He has
recently been admitted to the DFG Emmy Noether-Programme and is
currently establishing a junior research group on ‘Renewable Energies,
Renewed Authoritarianisms? The Political Economy of Solar Energy in
the MENA’.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/promoting-democracy-reinforcing-authoritarianism/39B35DCAD9D8F7B39A899F4A0CE99F5C
Biruk Terrefe
Biruk
Terrefe is a DPhil Candidate at St Antony’s College in Oxford.
Bram Büscher
Bram Büscher is Professor and Chair of the Sociology of Development
and Change group at Wageningen University and visiting professor at
the University of Johannesburg. Bram has published widely on the
relations between nature, biodiversity, (capitalist) development and
political-economy and is the author of ‘The Truth About Nature.
Environmentalism in the Era of Post-Truth Politics and Platform
Capitalism (University of California Press, 2021) and co-author,
together with Robert Fletcher, of ‘The Conservation Revolution:
Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond the Anthropocene’ (Verso,
2020). Bram is one of the senior editors of Conservation &
Society. For more information, and access to publications, see: www.brambuscher.com .
Bruno Milanez, Ph.D. in Environmental Policy
from Lincoln University, New Zealand.
- Associate Professor at the Department of Industrial and Mechanical
Engineering and the Graduate Programme in Geography at the Federal
University of Juiz de Fora (Brazil). He coordinates the Politics,
Economy, Mining, Environment, and Society Research Group (PoEMAS).
His research interests include corporate strategies, mining
legislation, and the relationship between mining corporations and
the government.
Selected recent publications:
- Milanez, B., Ali, S. H., & de Oliveira, J. A. P. (2021).
Mapping industrial disaster recovery: lessons from mining dam
failures in Brazil. Extractive Industries and Society, 8(2),
100900.
- Losekann, C., & Milanez, B. (2021). Mining disaster in the
Doce River: Dilemma between governance and participation. Current Sociology, 00113921211059224.
Charis Enns
- Charis Enns is a Presidential Fellow in Socio-Environmental
Systems at the Global Development Institute at the University of
Manchester. Her research interests sit at the intersection of
critical development studies, human and environmental geography, and
political ecology, focusing on the impacts of large-scale
investments in land and natural resources on rural landscapes,
ecologies and socialities. Her most recent projects have looked at
investments in biodiversity conservation in East Africa, and the
impacts of large-scale infrastructure development on rural areas in
East and Central Africa.
Two recent publications:
- Enns, C., Bersaglio, B. and Karmushu, R. (2022). The Shifting
Planes of Desert Locust Control: How New Technologies are
Reconfiguring Spatialities of Disaster Management. Political
Geography. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629822001469
- Sneyd, A., Haman, S., Enns, C. and Sneyd, L. Q. (2022)
Commodity Politics: Contesting Responsibility in Central Africa.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
https://www.mqup.ca/commodity-politics-products%209780228008897.php?page_id=120563&
Claudia Derichs
- Claudia Derichs is a professor at the Department of Asian and
African studies at the Free University of Berlin. Her research
covers Asia and the Middle East (MENA), and addresses contemporary
political and social developments. Two decades of fieldwork in
Muslim Southeast Asia, the MENA region and Japan resulted in the
monograph Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation
(2017) that reflects on Area Studies in Western academia, suggesting
to re-think the conventional segregation into “geographical” regions
and pay intensified attention to transregional and translocal
connectivities between actors, institutions, ideas and beliefs.
Daniel Salau Rogei
- Daniel Salau Rogei is a post doctorate fellow at Carleton
University’s sociology and Anthropology department. He holds a
doctorate in Anthropology from Carleton University, Canada. For a
period spanning over 15 years, he extensively researched on and
consulted with indigenous and pastoral communities on development,
climate change, environment and social-economic empowerment. His
interests embodies the intersections between culture and modernity;
indigenous knowledge and modern forms of knowledge creation as well
as sustainable well-being (enkishon).
Gediminas Lesutis
- Gediminas Lesutis is a Marie Curie Fellow in the Department of
Human Geography, Planning and International Development, at the
University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Website: www.gediminaslesutis.com. His research is at
the intersection of global politics, human geography, and critical
theory, with a specific focus on politics of infrastructure,
precarity, extractivism, and contemporary capitalist development
across South and East Africa. His first monograph, The Politics of
Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering, was
published in 2022 with Routledge Interventions.
Selected recent publications:
- Lesutis, G. 2022. Disquieting ambivalence of
mega-infrastructures: Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway as
spectacle and ruination. Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space, Accepted. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758221125475
- Lesutis, G. 2022. Politics of disavowal: megaprojects,
infrastructural biopolitcs, disavowed subjects. The Annals of
the American Association of Geographers. Accepted. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2062292
Detlef Müller-Mahn
- Detlef Mueller-Mahn is professor of development geography at the
University of Bonn, and former spokesperson of the Collaborative
Research Center “Future Rural Africa” (www.futureruralafrica.de). His present
research focuses on the political ecology of land-use change,
future-making, and green development in East Africa. Recent projects
addressed the “riskscapes” of climate change in Africa, pastoralism
and hydro-development in Ethiopia, urban water management in
Khartoum, and the cut flower industry of Lake Naivasha in Kenya.
Two recent publications:
- Müller-Mahn, D., Mkutu, K., Kioko, E. (2021):
Megaprojects—mega failures? The politics of aspiration and the
transformation of rural Kenya. The European Journal of
Development Research
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-021-00397-x
- Müller-Mahn, D., Allouche, J., Gebreyes, M. Debarry, A.
(2022): The Water-Energy-Food Nexus Beyond “Technical Quick
Fix”: The Case of Hydro-Development in the Blue Nile Basin,
Ethiopia. Frontiers in Water, Vol. 4,
https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2022.787589
Ian Baird
Professor, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
See
all articles
Jana Hönke
Jana Hönke is a Professor at the University of Bayreuth. Her chair
group works at the intersection of global political sociology and
security, peace and conflict studies with a focus on Africa. She is
the author of Transnational Companies and Security Governance, 2013,
The Global Making of Policing: Postcolonial Perspectives (with
Mueller), 2016, and Africa’s Infrastructure Globalities (fc, with
Cezne and Yang), and co-edits the Spaces of Peace, Security and
Development book series at Bristol University Press. Her articles have
appeared in International Political Sociology, African Affairs,
Security Dialogue, Mobilities and World Development among others.
Link to personal page
Link to ERC Africa’s
Infrastructure Globalities project
Johannes Dittmann
Johannes Dittmann is a lecturer and PhD Candidate at the University
of Bonn (Department of Geography) and associated member of the
Collaborative Research Centre (CRC-TRR 228) “Future Rural Africa –
Future-Making and Socio-Ecological Transformation. His key interests
lie in development geography and political ecology of Eastern and
Southern Africa. His current research focuses on social-ecological
transformation in context of large-scale conservation and agricultural
schemes in Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia.
Kadara Swaleh
- Kadara Swaleh is a doctoral student at Freie Universität-Berlin in
the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. He is also a
Research Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin
in the research group “De: link: Re: link”–new spatial
configurations and local perspectives on transregional
infrastructure projects such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Kadara taught at Pwani University, Kenya, in the department of
Philosophy and Religious Studies before joining civil service and
later becoming a director of political affairs in the ruling Jubilee
party until April 2021. He holds a BA (Sociology) and an MA
(Religious Studies) from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. His Ph.D.
project examines the impact of China's BRI railway on diverse kinds
of laborers and traders in the port city of Mombasa, Kenya.
Kennedy Mkutu Agade
- Kennedy Mkutu Agade is a Professor in International Relations at
the United States International University-Africa, Nairobi, Kenya
and the author of several books and papers in the areas of conflict,
pastoralism, armed groups, and infrastructural development and the
extractive industry in pastoral areas of East Africa. He is a
consultant on conflict sensitivity for the World Bank in Kenya. His
current research on “Violent Futures” is part of the research
consortium CRC 228 “Future Rural Africa. Future-Making and
Social-Ecological Transformation” run by the Universities of Bonn
and Cologne, Germany, in collaboration with several universities in
Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia.
Selected recent publications:
- Mkutu, K. (2022). “Anticipation and Contestation along the
LAPSSET Infrastructure Corridor in Kenya”. Nomadic Peoples 26
(2), September 2022: 190-218,
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/np.2022.260203
.
- Mkutu, K., Müller-Koné, M., & Owino, E. (2021). “Future
visions, present conflicts: the ethnicized politics of
anticipation surrounding an infrastructure corridor in northern
Kenya”. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 15(4), October 2021:
707-727,
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1987700.
Linda Poppe
Linda Poppe is political scientist and Director of the Berlin office
of Survival International, the global movement for indigenous peoples.
Survival's work for the rights of Indigenous peoples has been
recognised with, among others, the Right Livelihood Award. Linda Poppe
is part of Survival's campaign to decolonise conservation.
Ralf Schneider
Ralf Schneider is Head of Program at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (Department G230
Construction in the international Cooperation) in Eschborn. He is
responsible for the operational team abroad, which implements
infrastructure measures in a wide range of countries in increasingly
fragile contexts.
Prior to his current position at GIZ headquarters, he worked in the
field of international cooperation in different countries such as
Benin, Ethiopia, Egypt, Mali, Tunisia or Bangladesh.
