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). Alexandra Hartman of UCL is co-organizer.
In 2020-21, the seminar series was linked to a new DSA Study Group on Land. Click here for the 2022-2023 seminar series held at the LSE (and virtually).
Our handbook for planners and stakeholders, Mapping Settlement Schemes in Kenya, produced by Fibian Lukalo (National Land Commission) and Robert Wayumba (Technical University of Kenya) was published by the National Land Commission in Kenya in 2020. [link]. We distributed 100 copies of this publication to local authorities in TransNzoia, Bungoma, and UasinGishu in Kenya in June 2022.
The Spatial Inequalities in African Political Economy Project, a four-year project funded by LSE's an ESRC Research Grant, ended in July 2022.
https://www.africa-spatial-inequalities.net. We are publishing from these results and posting our datasets on Harvard Dataverse. Please contact us for information on the Datasets.
This project developed 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.
Collaborators were Michael Wahman, Fibian Lukalo of Kenya's NLC, Leigh Gardner, and Andrew Linke. Others working on the project between Fall 2019 and Fall 2021 were PhD students Jennifer Kohler, Yohan Iddawela, and Cristin Fergus 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 at right) and Paddy Makene, Shiela Pamba, and Maureen Jerono of the NLC. Our Côte d'Ivoire team was made up of Dr. Brice Bado, Aristide Dion, and Irigo Zibo. Dr. Stephan Kyburz (PhD, Econ, Bern 2016) and Juliette Crespin-Boucaud, Paris School of Economics (PhD 2022) worked as post-doctoral researchers. LSE IR undergraduate Eva Richer did data analysis. LSE MSc student in Data Science Jonathan Karl worked as data analyst in Oct. 2020-May 2021. In Summer 2022, we did field work in Uasin Gishu and Bungoma, Kenya. In 2022, Linchuan Xu, PhD in the LSE Department of Economics, was working on the GIS files (maps).
Read some of our blog posts:
https://www.africa-spatial-inequalities.net. We are publishing from these results and posting our datasets on Harvard Dataverse. Please contact us for information on the Datasets.
This project developed 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.
Collaborators were Michael Wahman, Fibian Lukalo of Kenya's NLC, Leigh Gardner, and Andrew Linke. Others working on the project between Fall 2019 and Fall 2021 were PhD students Jennifer Kohler, Yohan Iddawela, and Cristin Fergus 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 at right) and Paddy Makene, Shiela Pamba, and Maureen Jerono of the NLC. Our Côte d'Ivoire team was made up of Dr. Brice Bado, Aristide Dion, and Irigo Zibo. Dr. Stephan Kyburz (PhD, Econ, Bern 2016) and Juliette Crespin-Boucaud, Paris School of Economics (PhD 2022) worked as post-doctoral researchers. LSE IR undergraduate Eva Richer did data analysis. LSE MSc student in Data Science Jonathan Karl worked as data analyst in Oct. 2020-May 2021. In Summer 2022, we did field work in Uasin Gishu and Bungoma, Kenya. In 2022, Linchuan Xu, PhD in the LSE Department of Economics, was working on the GIS files (maps).
Read some of 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.
Read our 2021 paper in Political Geography (also available open access in PG).
Find a list of panels and presenters here.
Read our 2021 paper in Political Geography (also available open access in PG).
Find a list of panels and presenters here.
Our handbook for planners and stakeholders, Mapping Settlement Schemes in Kenya, produced by Fibian Lukalo (National Land Commission) and Robert Wayumba (Technical University of Kenya) was published by the National Land Commission in Kenya in 2020. We are releasing a new series of booklets in Fall 2021. [link]
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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.
This research has produced two consecutive open-access articles on land registration in CI: "Shifting visions of property under competing political regimes: Changing uses of Côte d'Ivoire 1998 land law," Journal of Modern African Studies 56/2 (2018) (link to article) and "Push, Pull, and Push-Back: Regional Tensions in Ivoirian Land Certification," Journal of Modern African Studies 59/3 (2021)[link] with Brice Bado, Aristide Dion, and Zibo Irigo. Three MSc students at CERAP in Abidjan were involved in the "Vie social du certificat foncier" project: Aristide Dion, Irigo Zibo, and Ismael Sonogo (pictured 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 and working paper
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(L-R) Ismael Sonogo, Aristide Dion, Irigo Zibo