African Perspectives on Transregional Spaces

In a time of two global wars, when polarisation, economic crises and hostility towards Israel are dividing societies, the academy is urged to respond. How have our perspectives on transregional spaces changed since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine? How are concepts of resilience changing? And how does transregional research react to this? In this interdisciplinary panel, we will focus on perspectives from the Global South on war and conflict, highlight their potential for future discussion and contextualise historically the developments in Eastern Europe in relation to developments on the African continent.

The event will take place in person, but there is also the possibility to join via Zoom by clicking on the button below.

Panelists

Temitope Oriola (Alberta, Canada)

Temitope Oriola is professor of criminology and sociology and associate dean in the Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta. A recipient of the Governor General of Canada Academic Gold Medal, Oriola is author of Criminal Resistance? The Politics of Kidnapping Oil Workers, one of a small number of book-length sociological investigations of political kidnapping in the English language. Oriola’s research encompasses police use of force, resource insurgencies and terrorism studies. Professor Oriola is a recipient of the CAFA Distinguished Academic Award and president-elect of the Canadian Sociological Association(CSA).

Francis Onditi (Nairobi, Kenya)

Prof. Francis Onditi is an Associate Professor of Conflictology and Head of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Riara University in Nairobi, Kenya. He specializes in the geography and evolution of African conflicts and has been recognized among the world’s top scientists by Stanford University. His research includes the ‘dominatarian theory of regional integration’ and ‘Technology for Peaceful Society,’ focusing on conflict dynamics and the development of interethnic border markets as infrastructures for peace. Prof. Onditi has held roles with UN agencies and the International Peace Support Training Centre, contributing to his extensive expertise in women, peace, and security.

Chris Saunders (Cape Town, South Africa)

Chris Saunders began his archival research in the late 1960s while working on his doctoral dissertation on the Transkei at Oxford. In the 1970s, as a faculty member at the University of Cape Town, he focused on Africans in Cape Town and historiography. He has studied the transition from apartheid to democracy in Namibia and South Africa and contributed to digital projects on these topics. His publications include Southern African Liberation Struggles: New Local, Regional and Global Perspectives (2013), a chapter on Albert Luthuli in Africa’s Peacemakers (2014), and a contributions to Inside African Anthropology (2013).

Helder Fonseca (Évora, Portugal)

Helder Adegar Fonseca is a full professor in the Department of History at the University of Évora, holding a Ph.D. in Contemporary History and a specialization in European Social History. He is a member and former president of the Portuguese Association of Economic and Social History and a member of the European Graduate School for Training in Economic and Social History Research. His research focuses on the history of agriculture, elites, and social mobility in Europe, and more recently, on transnational social history of Europe and Southern Africa. His fields of expertise include social change, stratification, cultural diversity, and qualitative analysis.

Moderators

Ulf Engel (Leipzig University)

As a political scientist and historian, Ulf Engel is primarily interested in the development of continental and regional organizations in Africa, particularly the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs). He focuses on their policies in governance, peace, and security, as well as their roles in globalization processes, positioning his research at the intersection of historical and sociological institutionalism and practice theory. Additionally, Engel closely monitors developments in South Africa, Southern Africa, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa, employing a deductive, comparative, and historicizing approach in his studies.

Lena Dallywater (Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (IfL), Leipzig)

Lena Dallywater has been with the IfL since October 2016. She has been a PhD candidate at the Graduate School Global and Area Studies, Research Academy Leipzig. Previously, she coordinated the DFG Priority Programme 1448 “Adaptation and Creativity in Africa” and worked as a Research Programme Coordinator at the Global and European Studies Institute and the Centre for Area Studies at Leipzig University.