This edited volume offers new insights into the inner life of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and introduces scholars of African security dynamics to innovative epistemological, conceptual and methodological approaches. Based on intellectual openness and an interest in transdisciplinary perspectives, the volume challenges existing orthodoxies, poses new questions and opens a discussion on actual research practice. Drawing on Global Studies and critical International Studies perspectives, the authors follow inductive approaches and let the empirical data enrich their theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools. In this endeavor they focus on actors, practices and narratives involved in African Peace and Security and move beyond the often Western-centric premises of research carried out within rigid disciplinary boundaries.
Contributors are Michael Aeby, Yvonne Akpasom, Katharina P.W. Döring, Ulf Engel, Fana Gebresenbet Erda, Linnéa Gelot, Amandine Gnanguênon, Toni Haastrup, Jens Herpolsheimer, Alin Hilowle, Jamie Pring, Lilian Seffer, Thomas Kwasi Tieku, Antonia Witt, Dawit Yohannes Wondemagegnehu
Katharina P.W. Döring is Researcher at Södertörn University Stockholm, studying geopolitics at the level of the African Union. She received her PhD from Leipzig University (2019). She has published in
African Security,
South African Journal of International Affairs and
Comparativ.
Ulf Engel is Professor of “Politics in Africa” at Leipzig University. He did his PhD (1993) and Habilitation (1999) at Hamburg University. He is the editor of the
Yearbook on the African Union Volume 1 (2020) (Brill, 2021).
Linnéa Gelot is a Senior Researcher at the Folke Bernadotte Academy and an Associate Professor in Peace and Development Studies. She holds a PhD in International Relations from Aberystwyth University (2009). She has published widely on African security dynamics.
Jens Herpolsheimer is a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Centre Global Dynamics, Leipzig University. He holds a PhD in Global Studies from Leipzig University (2019). He is the author of
Spatializing Practices of Regional Organizations during Conflict Intervention (2021).
[...] '„The book’s focus on methods may be one of its more enduring contributions. Long after more empirical and policy-orientated studies have moved on to focus on emergent developments and other cases, this book’s invitation to be more methodologically transparent, reflexive, and creative, is one many other researchers could heed'.
Aly Verjee, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, in
African Security Review (2022)
The book appeals to both post-graduate students, scholars and researchers in policy-oriented research circles, so-called practitioners and experts, journalists, international organisations’ and non-governmental organisations’ staff, diplomats and policymakers.