Ongoing Projects
The Land Politics Working Group brings together faculty and students at all levels from across the London institutions to read and discuss issues revolving around the commodification of land. We consider land as an asset (values, speculation, impact of shifting patterns of control on accumulation and inequality); land politics as making and unmaking state-recognized citizen groups and other collectivities; and land and state-building (-decay?) processes that revolve around territorial boundaries, projection of state power, division of territories and related political opportunity (political demobilization) structures, accumulation strategies, and class formation (non-formation). Since 2017, Alexandra Hartman of UCL has been co-organizer.
In 2020, we upgraded to become a the seminar series component of a new DSA Study Group on Land.
In 2020, we upgraded to become a the seminar series component of a new DSA Study Group on Land.
The Spatial Inequalities in African Political Economy Project (Jan. 2017+) is a four-year project funded by LSE's RIIF Seed Fund and (since Jan. 2018) by an ESRC Research Grant.
Breaking free from the old constraints, this project develops new theory, new data, and innovative empirical analysis to show that existing empirical studies have missed the level of analysis most appropriate for understanding patterns of cleavage and competition that drive electoral struggles, development policy disputes, and civil conflict within African countries: the sub-national, regional level.
My collaborators are Michael Wahman, Fibian Lukalo of Kenya's NLC, Leigh Gardner, and Andrew Linke. Others working on the project in Fall 2019 are PhD students Jennifer Kohler and Yohan Iddawela at the LSE, Sandra Joireman at the Univ. of Richmond and the Spatial Analysis Lab team at UR (including Griffen Walsh, Lauren Scheffey, and Meg Carroll and Nina Mauney, pictured below) and Paddy Makene, Shiela Pamba, and Maureen Jerono of the NLC. Dr. Stephan Kyburz (PhD, Econ, Bern 2016) joined the project as a full-time post-doc in August 2019. LSE IR undergraduate student Eva Richter is our research assistant.
Please see our Project Website for more information on the team, publications, research, and resources!
Read our blog posts:
Breaking free from the old constraints, this project develops new theory, new data, and innovative empirical analysis to show that existing empirical studies have missed the level of analysis most appropriate for understanding patterns of cleavage and competition that drive electoral struggles, development policy disputes, and civil conflict within African countries: the sub-national, regional level.
My collaborators are Michael Wahman, Fibian Lukalo of Kenya's NLC, Leigh Gardner, and Andrew Linke. Others working on the project in Fall 2019 are PhD students Jennifer Kohler and Yohan Iddawela at the LSE, Sandra Joireman at the Univ. of Richmond and the Spatial Analysis Lab team at UR (including Griffen Walsh, Lauren Scheffey, and Meg Carroll and Nina Mauney, pictured below) and Paddy Makene, Shiela Pamba, and Maureen Jerono of the NLC. Dr. Stephan Kyburz (PhD, Econ, Bern 2016) joined the project as a full-time post-doc in August 2019. LSE IR undergraduate student Eva Richter is our research assistant.
Please see our Project Website for more information on the team, publications, research, and resources!
Read our blog posts:
- Customary land claims are at stake in northern Uganda (2020)
- Do Socio-Economic cleavages matter for development in African countries? (2019)
- Multi-methods research across continents: Land in Kenya (2018)
- Refocusing scholarly attention on Kenya's smallholder settlement schemes is long overdue (2018)
- What Land Governance in Uganda can teach us about #PublicAuthority (2018)
The British Institute in Eastern Africa hosted an all-day research conference co-sponsored by myself and Fibian Lukalo (National Land Commission of Kenya) in June 2019. We presented new research on changing patterns of land governance and subnational politics in Kenya, considering legacies of colonial native authorities, post-colonial settlement schemes, and group ranches on patterns of development across the regions, districts, electoral constituencies, and counties of Kenya. Presenters from academia, government, law, and the NGO sector considered the some of the causes and effects of geographical inequalities in Kenya, and how these interact with land politics, electoral politics, and politics in general.
Find a list of panels and presenters here.
Find a list of panels and presenters here.
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The research project on Land Management under Kenya's New Constitution was funded by the LSE's International Inequalities Insititute. It was published in 2019 African Affairs (link to article) with Alex Dyzenhaus, Catherine Gateri, Seth Ouma, James Owino, Achiba Gargule, Jacqueline Klopp, and Ambreena Manji as co-authors.
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The "Vie sociale du certificat foncier" project in Côte d'Ivoire continues in Fall 2018 in collaboration with Dr. P. Brice Bado at CERAP in Abidjan. Originally funded as a LSE STICERD pilot study, this continues as part of the Center for Public Authority research program at the LSE (CPAID) and is substantively linked to the "Preferences for Titling" stream of the Spatial Inequality project.
The STICERD pilot resulted in a paper that appears in JMAS 56/2 (2018) as "Shifting visions of property under competing political regimes: Changing uses of Côte d'Ivoire 1998 land law" (link to article). Three MSc students are CERAP are currently engaged in the "Vie social du certificat foncier" project: Aristide Dion, Irigo Zibo, and Ismael Sonogo (seen below). In the photo on the right you see us in the Dept. of Daloa to discuss land certification (Feb. 2019). Read our blog post: |
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(L-R) Ismael Sonogo, Aristide Dion, Irigo Zibo
