Center for African Studies

The Working Group on Institutions and the State in Africa and the Center for African Studies are pleased to invite all interested faculty and graduate students to attend our upcoming virtual panel:

The Current Conflict in Ethiopia: Internal/Domestic & Regional Dimensions

November 15 @ 3:00 PM

With Panelists Michael Woldemariam & Tobias Hagmann

Moderated by Dr. Terje Østebø, Professor and Chair, Department of Religion and Center for African Studies, University of Florida

The panelists will review and discuss the unfolding events occurring in Ethiopia and its regional implications. A moderated Q&A will follow. Our aim is to provide a forum for Faculty and students to better grasp the current situation in the Horn by hearing from experts who have long worked in the region

Attend on Zoom

Michael Woldemariam

Michael Woldemariam is an associate professor of International Relations at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies. He also serves on BU’s graduate faculty of Political Science and is a faculty affiliate at the African Studies Center. He previously worked as a research specialist with Princeton

University’s Innovations for Successful Societies program, and held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC and Penn State’s Africana Research Center. Woldemariam’s teaching and research interests are in African security studies, with a particular focus on armed conflict in the Horn of Africa. Woldemariam’s scholarly work has been published in the journals Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Terrorism and Political Violence, Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Journal of Eastern African Studies. His popular essays have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Current History. His first book, Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and Its Discontents, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2018. In addition to his scholarly work, Woldemariam has consulted with a wide variety of international organizations, primarily on issues related to politics, governance, and security in the Greater Horn of Africa region.

Professor Woldemariam’s areas of expertise include comparative politics, international security, African politics, the Horn of Africa, political violence and conflict, post-conflict governance and institution building, and identity politics.

Tobias Hagmann

Tobias Hagmann is a Swiss political scientist with a broad interest in comparative politics and international development. Hagmann follows and contribute to academic and policy debates on the political sociology of the state, the causes and consequences of violent conflict and natural resource management in the global South. Since 1998 his research has concentrated on the Horn of Africa – particularly Ethiopia and the Somali territories. Tobias is the director of Public Culture Lab Ltd in Switzerland and an associate professor at Roskilde University in Denmark. He is a fellow at the Rift Valley Institute in Nairobi/London, Swisspeace in Basel and Somali Public Agenda in Mogadishu. He is a member of the editorial boards of African Affairs and the Journal of Eastern African Studies.

Twitter @writingpolitics

Attend on Zoom

About State & Institutions Working Group

The working group examines the role of formal and informal institutions in African political life. It is particularly interested in the effect of institutions on the relationship between the state and society. It examines to what extent the state is the key driver of the political developments on the continent and under which institutional constraints the state is operating. The group further wants to interrogate the ways that institutions vary between scales of governance as well as how institutions are affected by non-state actors. The focus on the state thus does not mean that we neglect other actors and their impact. Instead, we wish to examine the state and its effects in relation vis-à-vis other actors and within the context-specific institutional framework surrounding the state.

The group is open to all disciplinary approaches, all methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, and experiments) and all levels (local, national, international) of analysis. At this early stage the working group unites faculty and graduate students from the following disciplines: political science, economics, and anthropology. We intend to broaden our interdisciplinary focus over the course of the next few months as we remain open for other disciplinary approaches. We deliberately do not focus on any region within Sub-Saharan Africa but are open to scholarship covering all parts of the continent.

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