Catherine Boone is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a political scientist interested in patterns regionalism and political-economic development issues in Africa in a comparative perspective. Her work is or has been funded by the UK Research Council ESRC, LSE International Inequalities Institute, LSE STICERD, the SSRC, Fulbright, the World Bank, Harvard Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (ACLS). She is an elected Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the British Academy. In 2024 she was awarded the "Distinguished Africanist Award" (for impact on the study of African politics) by the African Politics Conference Group, an organized section of the American Political Science Association and the African Studies Association.
Professor Boone is the author of four books, including Inequality and Political Cleavage in Africa: Regionalism by Design (Cambridge University Press, 2024), which focuses on the causes and effects of spatial (geographic) inequalities within African countries. She is also author of Property and Political Order: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics in Africa (Cambridge, 2014), winner of APSA's 2016 Luebbert Book Award for best book in Comparative Politics.
In Fall 2024, Professor Boone was on sabbatical and conducting research in Kenya and Côte d'Ivoire on a new project on partisan politics and the governance of commodity chains in export agriculture (coffee and cocoa).
She serves on the editorial board of several journals and book series, including the Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics series, the CUP Elements series, and Comparative Politics. She is member or past member of the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, Journal of Modern African Studies, African Affairs, Comparative Political Studies, World Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, and the African Studies Review. She is past Secretary of the African Politics Conference Group, and past Treasurer and President of the West African Research Association, which oversees the West African Research Center in Dakar, Senegal. She has served as member of the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association (ASA), 2009-2012, chair of the ASA Publications Committee, (2011-2012), member of the Executive Council of the American Political Science Association-, member APSA's Comparative Politics Section executive council, and Chair of the Political Economy Organized Section of APSA (2014-2016).
The Spatial Inequalities in African Political Economy project, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), ended in 2023. Click here for the UKRI website.
Click here for a January 2025 CV.
Contact:
Catherine Boone
Harold Laski Professor of Political Science
Professor of Comparative Politics
London School of Economics and Political Science
Depts. of Government and International Development
Connaught House, Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE UK
[email protected]
Catherine Boone
Harold Laski Professor of Political Science
Professor of Comparative Politics
London School of Economics and Political Science
Depts. of Government and International Development
Connaught House, Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE UK
[email protected]