Book Presentation | African Peacekeeping
Jonathan Fisher (University of Birmingham) and Nina Wilén (Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations)
📸 You can check the pictures here
Chair: Martijn Vlaskamp, Assistant Professor and Juan de la Cierva Incorporación Research Fellow at IBEI
Discussants:
- Oscar Mateos, Associate Professor at the Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations (Universitat Ramon Llull). He has published and edited several books and articles on conflict analysis, post-conflict peacebuilding processes and development challenges, mainly focused on Africa.
- Viviane Ogou, Founder and president of the youth organization/think-tank “La Puerta de África” (Gateway to Africa). IBEI Alumni (Master's in International Security 2020 - 2022). Specializing in the Sahel crisis and EU-Africa relations, Viviane has a special interest in military operations and peace-building processes.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Exploring the story of Africa's contemporary history and politics through the lens of peacekeeping, this concise and accessible book, based on over a decade of research across ten countries, focuses not on peacekeeping in Africa but, rather, peacekeeping by Africans. Going beyond the question of why post-conflict states contribute troops to peacekeeping efforts, Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén demonstrate how peacekeeping is – and has been – weaved into Africa's national, regional and international politics more broadly, as well as what implications this has for how we should understand the continent, its history and its politics. In doing so, and drawing on fieldwork undertaken in every region of the continent, Fisher and Wilén explain how profoundly this involvement in peacekeeping has shaped contemporary Africa.
Fisher, J., & Wilén, N. (2022). African Peacekeeping (New Approaches to African History). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108582179
SPEAKERS
Jonathan Fisher is Professor of Global Security at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the relationship between authoritarianism and (in)security across multiple levels – global, regional, domestic, and “the everyday”. Jonathan has a particular interest in the role of ideas and legitimacy in authoritarian systems and spaces, and has worked extensively in eastern Africa, where he has focused on the influence of guerrilla heritage on contemporary patterns of governance, conflict and cooperation.
Nina Wilén is Director of the Africa Programme at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations and Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at Lund University, as well as a Research Leader at IOB at the University of Antwerp. Her research interests include conflict analysis and peace processes and the relation between sovereignty and intervention. More specifically she has been doing research on military interventions, Security Force Assistance, Security Sector Reform (SSR), the politics of peacekeeping operations and military sociology. Geographically her research is concentrated to Sub-Saharan Africa, where she has conducted extensive fieldwork in Niger, Liberia, the DRC, Burundi, Rwanda and South Africa.