Department of Geography

politics, governance, borders, informality, liminality, Central Africa, Central Mediterranean

MA In Contemporary History, University of Ghent (Belgium)
MSc in International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK)
PhD in Political Science, University of Ghent (Belgium)

My research focuses on the (re-)configurations of public authority in environments where such authority is fundamentally being questioned and reformulated. This interest involves, amongst others, research on situations of protracted armed conflict and organized political violence. It also involves research on in|formality and non|state authority, focusing for instance on the mediation of (minerals) commodity and labour markets in Central Africa (the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda), and the Mediterranean (North and South Italy). Over time this interest has brought me to raise wider questions about the limits of/to sovereign power, both in a geographical sense (e.g. in the study of territorial borders and the margins of the state) and in a more anthropological sense (with a focus on liminality, and the politics of difference). In all these cases, I continue to combine a strong theoretical interest with a dedication to in-depth longitudinal ethnographic study and engaged public debate.