Fellows 2020

PAULINE ADAM

Quantification Devices of Irregular Migration at the European Union Level: Between ´computational coalitions´ and Use in Migration Governance

Université Libre de Bruxelles / École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship

ABSTRACT
Quantification devices of irregular migration at the European Union (EU) level are the product of a social and historical construction. Nowadays, several European institutions and international organizations produce figures on irregular migration at the EU level with different indicators. Sources and methods are diverse. To understand this proliferation, this research aims at analyzing why and how these data have multiplied, considering quantification devices of irregular migration at the EU level as a research topic. The study of these devices enables us to analyze the trajectories and interests of the stakeholders who design and use them, the features of the social space in which they are situated and their use in migration governance.

BIOGRAPHY
Pauline Adam is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the REPI (Recherche et Études en Politique Internationale, ULB, Brussels) and the CMH (Centre Maurice Halbwachs, ENS-EHESS, Paris). Her research interests include international political sociology, social studies of quantification and migration. She previously studied at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Sciences Po Lille. Before her Ph.D., Pauline worked as an intern in several institutions specialized in migration, asylum and refugees related issues (the UNHCR, El Sistema Greece, the French Ministry of the Interior).

JOSEPHINE AKINYOSOVE

Black Politics, Activism and Identity in Western Europe: Negotiations, Continuities and Visions

University of Hamburg
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship

ABSTRACT
In many European cities, new Black initiatives, groups, art forms and movements are emerging that explore, center, and celebrate Blackness and Afroeuropeaness. The year 2020 showed the impressive formation of Black resistance cultures and organizations after the death of George Floyd. Despite much excellent work on Black History and Activism in Europe there have been few insights on how Black movements are breaking through, as well as constructing borders through transnational activism. At this very moment in time, it is crucial to research the relationship between Critical Border Studies and Black Studies and how they contribute to one another. I will connect a multiperspectival study of borders to black liberatory politics, theory and resistant identity constructions, to conceptualize them as dismantling, shifting, and constructing new borders.

BIOGRAPHY
Josephine Akinyosoye received her Bachelor's degree in Sociology and is currently completing her Master's degree in International Criminology at the University of Hamburg. Her studies concentrate on Black Studies, Feminist Postcolonial Studies, Decolonial Studies and Methodologies, Critical Border and Migration Studies. She also works as a freelance educational trainer, focusing on racism, colonialism, and intersectional feminism. She is active in antiracist groups in Hamburg and was part of organizing the „Quo Vadis - 2nd Transnational Herero and Nama Congress” and the Black History Month Hamburg.

PUBLICATIONS
Akinyosoye, J., K. Thallemer und V. Wiegel, 2020: „Wahrheitspraxen in der deutschen Abschiebegesellschaft. Körperlichkeit an der Schnittstelle von Diskurs und Praxis um Reise(un)fähigkeit“. KJ Kritische Justiz 53 (2): 240–55. https://doi.org/10.5771/0023-4834-2020-2-240
Akinyosoye, J., Röhr L., Kalpaka, A. 2019: „Diskriminierung erkennen - Strategien entwickeln“ - Fachgespräch zu den Schwerpunkt-Themen Rassismus und Cis-Sexismus an der Hochschule, Standpunkt: sozial (2019/3).

OSCAR APONTE

The Roads to Rural Colonization: A Regional History of Putumayo, Colombia, 1893-1977

The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
My project analyzes the process of state formation and the penetration of capitalism into one of the last indigenous frontiers of modern Latin America - the Amazon rainforest. In particular, it examines the interconnection between roadbuilding projects and colonization cycles in the present-day Putumayo Department - located in the northwestern corner of the Colombian portion of the Amazon rainforest - between the arrival of the Capuchin missionaries in the area in 1893 and the departure of U.S. based Texas Petroleum Company (Texaco) from Putumayo in 1977. To address the social, economic, political, and cultural transformation of Putumayo during the twentieth century, my project relies on a combination of archival research, oral history, and ethnographic research in the area.

BIOGRAPHY
Oscar Aponte was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and holds a B.A. in sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and an M.A. in history from the Universidad de los Andes. He is a Ph.D. candidate of Latin American and Caribbean history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, one of the co-chairs of the Colombian Studies Group, and the chair of the student section of the Latin American Studies Association. He is interested in agrarian history, critical agrarian studies, infrastructure studies, environmental history, history of the press, labor history, Latinx studies, and critical theory.

PUBLICATIONS
Aponte, O. (2021). The Socioeconomic Background of the COVID-19 Pandemic in New York City: Latinos in Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights, 1990-2019. Latino Data Project, Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies, The Graduate Center, CUNY [forthcoming].
Aponte, O. (2021). Socioeconomic Conditions of Foreign-Born and Domestic-Born Latinos in New York City, 1990-2018. Latino Data Project, Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies, The Graduate Center, CUNY [forthcoming].
Aponte, O. (2019). The Making of a Modern Newspaper: El Tiempo in Colombia, 1911-1940, Palabra Clave 40 (2).
Mosquera, C., Aponte, O., Garcés, S. y López, S. (2017). Trabajadores, recuperación de fábricas y neoliberalismo en Colombia (1995-2015). Revista Colombiana de Sociología 40 (2), 237-254.

ERIC ELIKEM ASHIABI

Contested Citizenship and Social Cohesion: A Comparative Study of the Ewe and Mande Cross-Border Ethnic Groups in West Africa

University of Duisburg-Essen
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship

ABSTRACT
Africa’s political borders still have ramifications for the citizens, especially members of cross-border ethnic groups. Several years after these borders were artificially drawn, some states and “one country ethnic groups” persist in contesting the citizenship of cross-border ethnic groups. Thus, I seek to understand how the contestation of the citizenship of cross-border ethnic groups influence the way the affected relate with members of other ethnicities and the state authority in their countries. Does the variety in political regimes matter for this relationship? Using Afrobarometer geocoded data and field interviews in a mixed method research design, the topics of citizenship and social cohesion will be explored amongst the Ewes (a cross border ethnic group in Ghana and Togo) and Mandes (another ethnic group resident across Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso) in West Africa.

BIOGRAPHY
Eric Elikem Ashiabi obtained his M.A. in Development and Governance from the University of Duisburg-Essen as a DAAD Helmut Schmidt Scholar. For his first degree, he earned a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Ghana. He also consulted for the German Development Institute on the “Social Cohesion in Africa” project. He has also worked in the development sector in Ghana, concentrating on the area of local governance.

PUBLICATIONS
Ashiabi, Eric Elikem (2021). Political Vigilantism in Ghana’s Democratic Consolidation: A Democracy in Need of a Critical Mass to Redirect Political Behaviour and Actor Choices. African Studies Quarterly, 20 (1).
Ashiabi, Eric Elikem. & Avea, Avea Prosper. (2019). The Absence of a Disability Measurement System in the Disbursement of the District Assembly Common Fund for Persons with Disabilities in Ghana: How the Most Vulnerable are Denied Access. Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal,15 (4).

PETER AWODI

Politics of Identity: Colonial Border Delineation, Belonging and the Securitization of the Anglophone People of Cameroon

University of Ibadan
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
My doctoral project critically examines the interface between colonial border delineation of 1961 and the ongoing anglophone crisis of identity, belonging and citizenship in contemporary Cameroon. Physical border delineation by British and French colonial powers have birthed ethno-political and lingual borders in Cameroon which have exacerbated ethnic struggles, citizenship contestations, patronage politics, violence, and conflict. Drawing on historical and exploratory research design, I first seek to interrogate how physical Anglo-French colonial border delineation morphed into the current political, cultural and lingual borders in Cameroon; second, investigate the human security impacts of the anglophone crisis on refugees and displaced persons; and, third, examine the extent to which this crisis has resulted in the securitization of vulnerable trans-border refugees in Nigeria.

BIOGRAPHY
Peter Awodi is a Ph.D. researcher at the University of Ibadan, Department of Political Science. He specializes in comparative politics, within which he is primarily interested in the politics of identity and citizenship, and the extent to which political institutions construe and shape identity, citizenship and belonging across different political spaces. This further overlaps into interrogating the implications of identity and citizenship contestations on human security and securitization. Before beginning his Ph.D. at the University of Ibadan, Peter received a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Benue State University and a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Ibadan.

LAURA CHARNEY

A Tale of Two Treaties: Adjudicating Canada’s Colonial Borderlands

McGill University
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship

ABSTRACT
My research employs a transsystemic analysis of liberal legal theory and Indigenous legal traditions to examine the role of treaties in establishing Canada’s borders. I suggest that Canada’s historic treaties with Indigenous people offer a constitutional basis upon which First Nations’ land claims can be pursued. Indigenous legal traditions have largely been ignored at the level of the Supreme Court of Canada in landmark constitutional challenges to land entitlement. Yet, centering Indigenous legalities can revitalize historic treaties to produce legally binding effects. I ask: how has Canada utilized the process of treaty-making to coerce the “ceding” of Indigenous land? How can a reading of treaties through Anishinaabe legalities alter our understanding of Canadian citizenship?

BIOGRAPHY
Laura is a researcher, writer, and graduate student-turned-law student. Her Master’s thesis research, conducted in Serbia, examined the impact of EU border closures in the Balkans and the tensions between anti-trafficking policies and the lived experiences of women and LGBTQ migrants. She holds an M.A. from the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University and a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Toronto, where she studied Archaeology and Anthropology. Currently, she is pursuing both common law (JD) and civil law (BCL) degrees at McGill University.

PUBLICATIONS
Laura Charney. "Mapping Gender Violence Along the Balkan Route: Humanitarian Assemblages, Securitization Policies, and the Experiences of Women Refugees and Migrants." 2021. Rapoport Center Human Rights Working Paper Series. The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at The University of Texas at Austin.

DAIGENGNA DUOER

Buddhism Beyond Nations and Empires: Mapping Transnational Buddhist Networks from Early Twentieth-Century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria

University of California Santa Barbara
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship

ABSTRACT
Focusing on Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, my dissertation explores how transregional and transnational Buddhists from across Asia formed networks and relationships beyond the borders of nations and empires to further their religious and political agendas in the early twentieth century. I will address issues regarding the ways in which Buddhist institutions and individuals, from Tibetan lamas to Japanese missionary monks, engaged with changing regimes and the instability of borders during World War II, and the consequences of those engagements. Employing diverse primary sources found in multi-lingual archives, this project will implement digital humanities methods such as ArcGIS to digitally map Buddhist sites and activities, and Gephi to conduct network analysis on how transnational Buddhist networks expanded and mattered across Asia.

BIOGRAPHY
Daigengna Duoer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is interested in Buddhism in twentieth-century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. Daigengna mainly works with Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Mongolian sources. She completed both of her H.B.A. in Buddhist Studies and Art History and M.A. in Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto. Daigengna is a host for the New Books in East Asia Studies Podcast, a channel on the New Books Network. She is also an editor of Mongolian Studies for the Digital Orientalist, an online magazine on digital humanities.

PUBLICATIONS
Duoer, Daigengna. “Making the Esoteric Public: The Ninth Panchen Lama and the Trans-ethnonational Rituals of the Kālacakra Initiations in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia,” Acta Mongolica 2019, 18 (532), pp.131-175.
Duoer, Daigengna. “From ‘Lama Doctors’ to ‘Mongolian Doctors’: Regulations of Inner Mongolian Buddhist Medicine under Changing Regimes and the Crises of Modernity (1911-1976),” Religions 2019, 10, 373.

WALID HABBAS

The Political Economy of the West Bank-Israeli Economic Relationship: Class and Sectoral Analysis

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
After the Oslo Accords, Israel upgraded its structure of domination over the West Bank and imposed a rigid segregated structure. Around the same period, Palestinian-Israeli economic relationships intensified. This research investigates this increased integration with a disaggregated approach. By splitting the West Bank economy into class-sector combinations, the project will investigate the agency of Palestinian classes in advancing their economic interest vis-à-vis the Israeli colonial structures, in particular the border regime. In some Palestinian economic activities, the Israeli colonial policies were constraints; in others it appeared to open opportunities to accumulate profit. I hypothesize that several factors interplay and shape the ability of Palestinian actors to integrate in the Israeli economy: 1) the negotiable nature of the Israeli institutions; 2) the presence of the Palestinian Authority with relationships with both Israeli state institutions and the Palestinian population; 3) the existence of different colonial policies (Areas A,B,C) across the space.

BIOGRAPHY
Walid Habbas is a Palestinian Ph.D. student from Jerusalem who joined the Sociology and Anthropology department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the end of 2018. He is researching Palestinian-Israeli economic relationships since the end of the Second Palestinian Intifada. He is also volunteering as a researcher in the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR). His research interests are in the field of political economy, border studies and colonialism with emphasis on the West Bank-Israeli context.

PUBLICATIONS
Habbas W and Berda Y (2021) Colonial management as a social field: The Palestinian remaking of Israel’s system of spatial control. Current Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921211024695
Habbas W (2021b) The West Bank-Israel Economic Integration: Palestinian Interaction with the Israeli Border and Permit Regimes. In: Tartir A, Dana T, and Seidel T (eds) Political Economy of Palestine: Critical, Interdisciplinary, and Decolonial Perspectives. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 111–134. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-68643-7_5.
Habbas W (2021) Economic Interventions of the Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank. 2, Roundtable. Ramallah: Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS). Available at: http://www.mas.ps/files/server/20210104144702-1.pdf.
Habbas W (2020) Upending the Israeli Border Function During COVID-19: The Case of Construction Labour. Borders in Globalization Review 1(3). https://doi.org/10.18357/bigr21202019881
Habbas W (2020) Israeli policies against the population and territory. In: Heacock R and Jaradat A (eds) Intifada 1987: A Nation Transformed. Ramallah: Institute for Palestine Studies.
Habbas W (2020) Palestinian Workers in the Israeli Market: The Labour Permit Brokerage System. Roundtable 9. Ramallah: Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS). Available at: http://www.mas.ps/files/server/2020/RoundTable9English-ed.pdf

JACQUELIN KATANEKSZA

Running in the Shadows: Fugitive Movements Across and Beyond the Dark City

The New School
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship

ABSTRACT
As Zimbabweans navigate cycles of hyper-inflation, emergent technologies afford new ways to self-sustain and make place, while negotiating precarity and “other side of the border” opportunities. Attentive to the precarity of cross-border mobility, this project foregrounds how mobile phone technologies (re)configure the ways people relate to each other, move through space (including the space of the Zimbabwean diaspora) and challenge pre-existing state-controlled economic institutions. I focus on cross-border running - a process and set of infrastructures wherein members of a new class of Zimbabwean entrepreneurs called runners are sourced online via Facebook or WhatsApp to procure goods from grocery and household stores in South Africa that cannot be sourced locally, on a commission basis for customers in Zimbabwe. I track how these goods are transported illicitly over the border through a network of informal relationships between runners, bus drivers, and border officials and which (in)equalities are made visible in the spaces across which they operate. I draw on anthropological, sociological, and critical geography theories to animate the contestations that this cross-border mobility reveals.

BIOGRAPHY
Jacquelin Kataneksza is a Zimbabwean doctoral candidate in Public and Urban Policy in the Milano School of Policy, Management and Environment at The New School. Her research focuses broadly on informality, mobilities, and mobile phone technologies in African contexts. Specifically, Jacquelin is concerned with how Zimbabweans use Internet communications technologies to navigate daily political and economic precarities and what that navigation reveals about the spatial production of the Zimbabwean economy and nation-state, and Zimbabweans' relationalities across racial and social boundaries.

THEA KIRSCH

Care or Control? The Safety/Security Nexus and the Externalization of Europe's Borders

Freie Universität Berlin
Bucerius Start Up Scholarship

ABSTRACT
Since the so-called 'refugee crisis' of 2015, the EU's fight against the 'root causes' of migration has entailed an even stronger emphasis on cooperating with African countries of migration origin and transit. Focusing on the EU Trust Fund for Africa and its funding of digital/biometric border technologies, this doctoral project critically examines the 'off-shoring' and 'outsourcing' of Europe's borders. As the EU increasingly exercises border controls extraterritorially, new coalitions between governmental, non-governmental, and market actors are emerging. Against this backdrop, this project asks how different actors negotiate the workings of multiple border rationalities (security, development, humanitarianism, and human rights discourses) in practice – and with what consequences.

BIOGRAPHY
Thea Kirsch is a Ph.D. candidate at the Berlin Graduate School for Global and Transregional Studies (BGTS) at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include digital technologies, border security, and state surveillance practices. She has been researching and developing projects on the socio-political challenges of digitalization for several years, having worked at the Hertie School of Governance, for Fraunhofer, and other research institutions, as well as in the digital industry. Thea Kirsch studied Political Science and Communication in Dresden, Montpellier, Boston, and Berlin. She holds a Master of Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin.

PUBLICATIONS
Kirsch, T. (2019). Das Visum und die Verlagerung der Grenzkontrolle. In T. Tohidipur & M. Pichl (Eds.), An den Grenzen Europas und des Rechts. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf Migration, Grenzen und Recht (pp. 149-176). transcript. DOI: 10.14361/9783839447147-008.
Kirsch, T. (2017, January 19). Unequal Im/Mobilities. Why Do Visa Policies Exclude Certain
Groups of People but Not Others? [Conference Presentation] Herkunft Zukunft Conference 2017, Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Technik Berlin, Germany. https://events.htw-berlin.de/files/Presse/Herkunft_Zukunft/Herkunft_Zukunft_Thea_Kirsch.pdf.

MAGDALENE KLASSEN

Good Work: Jewish Sex Work and Transnational Human Rights Work, 1885 – 1931

Johns Hopkins University
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
My research explores the role of non-governmental organizations in shaping the immigration law and processes by discourses and practices of transnational sex work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Across the borders of eastern Europe, Britain, and Argentina, with a dual focus on women who organized transnational networks to curtail sex work and the women who found work selling sex after migrating, I argue that Jewish sex work and efforts to prevent it were central to the consolidation of borders as moral spaces in era of mass European immigration.

BIOGRAPHY
Magdalene Klassen is a Ph.D. candidate in the History department at Johns Hopkins University, studying immigration and gender in the British empire. Prior to beginning her Ph.D., she completed a B.A. at McGill University and worked at the Museum of Jewish Montreal.

PUBLICATIONS
Klassen, Magdalene. “Going Out into the World: Humanitarianism, Assimilation, and Gender among Jewish members of the IODE, 1900-1939,” Canadian Jewish Studies, 28:1 (2019): 34-53.

ROMAIN LANNEAU

Respect for the Duty of Care and Data Quality a Guarantee for the Rule of Law in Asylum Procedure in the European Union

Bucerius Start Up Scholarship

ABSTRACT
Personal data collected stored and exchanged by national administrations and European agencies needs to respect data protection principles, including data quality. It implies removing unlawful or incorrect data from the system and investigating when there is a doubt on the matter, in accordance with the duty of care. My research intends to provide a conceptual method to test the respect for essential procedural safeguards in administrative authorities’ decisions to guarantee a harmonized enforcement of EU laws respectful of the individual rights of asylum seekers. What guarantees for individual rights of asylum seekers does offer the duty of care and of data quality in administrative authorities’ composite decisions in the European Union?

BIOGRAPHY
Romain Lanneau holds three law degrees from different legal systems and Human Rights have been in the focus of his studies. He is a recent graduate of a research LLM on the topic of International Migration and Refugee Law from the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. In the past, he worked for several NGOs, including the biggest research network on Migration and Refugee laws in Europe – the Odysseus Academic Network.

PUBLICATIONS
The Commission’s proposal for a new Independent Monitoring Mechanism at the external border of the EU: a necessary but too limited mechanism (February 22, 2021) by Romain Lanneau in Special Collection on the 'New' Migration and Asylum Pact Edited by Daniel Thym in the EU Migration Law Blog : https://eumigrationlawblog.eu/the-commissions-proposal-for-a-new-independent-monitoring-mechanism-at-the-external-border-of-the-eu-a-necessary-but-limited-mechanism/
Age assessment and the protection of minor asylum seekers: time for a harmonised approach in the EU (August 14, 2020) by Romain Lanneau and Evelien Brouwer in Refugee Law Initiative a blog of the University of London : https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2020/08/10/age-assessment-and-the-protection-of-minor-asylum-seekers-time-for-a-harmonised-approach-in-the-eu/?fbclid=IwAR36KDXLo3xuOYItg-LkkUqckkG0aAOI4bUnkofLWdc8CtFC2RT7QAndk4g
Assessing the Age of Children during the Asylum Procedure in Respect of Fundamental Rights Protection in Europe (July 4, 2020), Master Thesis for LLM International Migration and Refugee Law at the VU Amsterdam, supervised by Evelien Brouwer and the second reader Marcelle Reneman

ALEXANDER MAIER

Paper-Work: The Political Economy of Migration, Labor, and Documentation in Postsocialist Moscow

Columbia University
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
Employed in Russia’s vast shadow economy, Central Asian migrant workers are caught in a double bind between the demand to become legally legible and the realities of informal labor that make lawful status all but impossible. Alexander’s dissertation research asks how individuals negotiate securing documentation to support their claims in changing political contexts. By following the paper trails and people that crisscross immigration offices, legal aid organizations, administrative courts, and migrant spaces of work and rest in Moscow, his research examines the continuum of documents that support claims of identity and lawfulness in an attempt to move beyond binary characterizations of legal status.

BIOGRAPHY
Alexander Maier is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at Columbia University. His doctoral research examines the meanings, practices, and experiences of documentary precariousness among migrant workers from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in Moscow. Alexander was born in Kazakhstan and grew up in Germany. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the Free University of Berlin and an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford.

JAMES MEADOR

Making Chinese Orthodox

University of Michigan
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship

ABSTRACT
This dissertation project examines two groups of Chinese Orthodox Christians that have been united by the ongoing state-sponsored revival of the Chinese Orthodox Church: a group of Russian-descended Orthodox Manchus whose roots in Beijing stretch back to the seventeenth century, and mixed-race Chinese-Russian descendants of Russian political refugees who fled to Northeast China after the 1917 revolution. Through exploring the genealogies of these two groups, I reconstruct the changing role of Orthodox Christianity across fractured histories of Sino-Russian contact and interaction. Highlighting historical discontinuities helps to throw into relief the complex and contradictory legacies of imperial and socialist eras - legacies that haunt ongoing attempts by both state actors and Chinese Orthodox believers to make sense of the present.

BIOGRAPHY
James Meador is a Ph.D. candidate in Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Department of Anthropology. He holds a B.A. in Religious Studies and Russian Literature and Language from Reed College (2009). His research explores cultural contact in Inner Northeast Eurasia and religion as a medium for exchange and transformation, from the early modern period to the present. His empirical work is informed by theoretical discussions in imperial history, semiotic analysis, social theory, and virtue ethics.

NICHOLAS NYACHEGA

Borderlanders, Contested Sovereignties, and Everyday Life in North-Eastern Zimbabwe, c.1890s to 2021

University of Minnesota
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
Borderlands are both contested spaces and sanctuaries for self-determination. Using case studies of adjacent Honde Valley and Inyanga areas along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, my dissertation highlights the quotidian experiences of borderlanders since the colonial era. Through a critical analysis of oral histories and archival sources, I examine how borderlanders have historically challenged the power of both the colonial and post-colonial states by exploiting various ill-defined spaces where states sought to control them. I seek to argue that borderlanders have overtime renamed and redefined borders using their indigenous socioeconomic and political systems in ways that contest ideas, and technologies of state sovereignty and power such as borders.

BIOGRAPHY
Nicholas Nyachega is a historian of Africa, born and raised in Zimbabwe’s rural Honde Valley borderlands. He graduated from the University of Zimbabwe in 2013 with a B.A. Honors degree, majoring in History. In 2017, he earned a Master in African History from Rhodes University, South Africa. He is currently a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Minnesota, majoring in African History and minoring in Development Studies and Social Change. His doctoral research centers borderlanders’ everyday lives and local sovereignties to critically understand how individuals’ and their communities’ everyday life mobilities, goals and desires have changed over time and space.

PUBLICATIONS
On RENAMO “War”, Entrepreneurial Synergies, and Everyday Life in the Honde Valley Borderlands, c.1980s-2020, Journal of Southern African Studies, (co-author; Wesley Mwatwara: University of Zimbabwe), forthcoming
‘Policing Boundaries of the Body? Spirit-type African Apostolic Churches, and HIV/AIDS in Eastern Zimbabwe;1985-2015’, Nicholas Nyachega and Kudzai Biri (book chapter for Religion and Health in Africa), forthcoming
Catholicism and The Making of Politics in Central Mozambique, 1940–1986. By Eric Morier- Genoud. Book Review, Religious Studies Review, VOLUME 47, NUMBER 1, March 2021, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rsr.15116?fbclid=IwAR1LVrRva8sVqX4uMLtcq0YCurlV5ExSigS-YSWR0AK6x-83N2x-UDIhQ3o
‘Zimbabwe’s Liberation War and The Everyday in Honde Valley, 1975 to 1979’, South African Historical Journal) Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2019. (co-author: Innocent Msindo: Rhodes University), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582473.2019.1583682
‘Beyond War, Violence, and Suffering: Everyday Life in the Honde Valley Borderland Communities during Zimbabwe’s Liberation War and the RENAMO Insurgency, c.1960-2016’, 2017, MA Thesis: Rhodes University, South Africa, https://oatd.org/oatd/record?record=handle%5C%3A10962%5C%2F7023

ZORA PISKAČOVÁ

Torn Towns: Civic Elites between Local Belonging and Nationalization in Cieszyn and Český Těšín, 1919-1938

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
My dissertation is a transnational urban history of the divided city of Teschen in the interwar period. Beginning with the town’s split between Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1919, it examines the political and cultural practices that transformed the multinational Habsburg town of Teschen into Polish Cieszyn and Czech Český Těšín. The responses of local municipal and civic elites to the border established after the First World War indicate both their efforts to restructure one city into two, and their desire to symbolically claim the contested territory for their respective nation-states. By highlighting municipal, cross-border cooperation as well as the creation of local, multifaceted identities, this project aims to show that – alongside nationalization – borderland elites promoted political and societal stabilization.

BIOGRAPHY
Zora Piskačová is a Ph.D. candidate in Modern European History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States. She received her M.A. in East European Studies from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

BURAK SAYIM

Transnational Communist Networks in the Post-WW1 Middle East: Anti-Colonialism, Internationalism and Itinerant Militancy, 1919-1928

Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship

ABSTRACT
Burak Sayım's research examines the communist networks across the borders of the MENA region. The first part discusses various national liberation movements rocking the Middle East from Anatolia to Egypt and from Morocco to Iran in the 1920s as an integral part of a global wave of post-Great War revolutions and upheavals. Using this setting as a backdrop, it contextualizes the uneasy alliances of the Communist International with an array of national liberation movements across the region. Then, it tries to reconstruct the Communist habitus in the post-Great War Middle East and pays particular attention to the daily practices of militancy in an attempt to restore the agency of grassroots militants. The third section locates the Middle Eastern communists in the global radical networks and focuses on the transnational ties they forged and their militancy's cross-border practices. The final part explores the interaction of the Middle Eastern communists with the concepts of nation and religion – Islam in particular – and discusses what it might tell us about the interwar radical politics and the transforming identities in the region.

BIOGRAPHY
Burak Sayım earned his Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Istanbul. He completed his Master's Degree in Political Science/Latin American Studies at the Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle/IHEAL in France with a MIEM excellence scholarship granted by Université Sorbonne Paris Cité. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the International History and Politics program of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. He currently writes his dissertation based on archival research in five countries and over a dozen archives. He is fluent in Turkish, English, French and Italian and reads in Russian, Spanish and Ottoman Turkish. He is currently learning Arabic.

PUBLICATIONS
Occupied Istanbul as a Cominternian Hub: Sailors, Soldiers and Post-Imperial Networks (1918-1923), Itinerario: Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions, Forthcoming
Beyond Borders: An Entangled History of Communism in the Post-Ottoman Middle East, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Forthcoming

LUKAS SCHMID

Enforcing Borders and Preventing Immigration: A Normative Appraisal on Two Levels

European University Institute, Florence
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
My doctoral project critically examines and normatively appraises both the principle of sovereign state immigration enforcement as such, and some central strategies and practices employed by contemporary state (or state-like) actors in their quest to prevent irregular immigration and enforce their prerogatives of immigration control. I first ask if undivided, sovereign state rule over border enforcement can be reconciled with the moral priority of universal basic human rights respect. Secondly, I investigate what are the distinct normative issues posed by common and increasingly salient practices and strategies of immigration enforcement and prevention, namely deportation, border externalization, and border digitalization.

BIOGRAPHY
Lukas Schmid is a Ph.D. researcher at the European University Institute, Department of Political and Social Sciences. He specializes in social and political theory, within which he is particularly interested in normative questions about immigration control, various forms of critical theorizing, and the question to what extent the project of liberal political theory can justify and guide radical political change. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Law from the University of Munich, and a Master’s degree in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

PUBLICATIONS
Structural Injustice and Socially Undocumented Oppression: Changing Tides in Refugee and Immigration Ethics." Ethical Theory and Moral Practice FirstView. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10218-z
“Deportation, harms, and human rights”, Ethics & Global Politics 14 (2), pp. 98-109. doi.org/10.1080/16544951.2021.1926083
“Christopher Bertram, Do States Have the Right to Exclude Immigrants?”, Book Review, Journal of Moral Philosophy 18 (2), pp. 202-205. doi.org/10.1163/17455243-18020007

GIRMA DEFERE TEGEGN

Effects of Cross-Border Population Mobility on Environmental Resource Governance and Sustainability: Case of Ethio-Kenya

Jimma University
Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship

ABSTRACT
The international border making or colonial border making in Ethio-Kenya has not considered ethnicity, land use, and topography. Whereas most of the previous studies mainly focused on conflict and peace, this project examines the effects of cross-border population mobility on environmental resource governance and sustainability. In this regard, this study deals with the following questions: How far the international boundary demarcation has influenced the cross-border pastoral mobility and resource governance? Which attitude do the cross-border pastoral communities have towards environment and environmental sustainability? How do they perceive cross-border mobility, cross-border environmental use, and institutions to govern environmental resources? The study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods and involves surveys, key informants’ interviews, focus group discussions and field observation.

BIOGRAPHY
Girma Defere Tegegn is affiliated to the Department of Governance and Development Studies at Jimma University, Ethiopia. He has published on democracy, federalism and development in Ethiopia, citizenship education as well as on foreign aid and governance issues.

ANRAN WANG

The Model Borderland of Maoist China: Identity Politics and Ideological Contentions in Inner Mongolia, 1945-1966

Cornell University
Bucerius Dissertation Completion Scholarship

ABSTRACT
This project is a historical study that reconstructs the ethnopolitical developments in Inner Mongolia between the end of the Japanese colonization in 1945 and the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. During this period, different ethnonational identities and ideological lines co-existed and were pursued by various parties in the borderland and in the central party-state leadership in Beijing. The study argues that the Inner Mongolian leadership applied sophisticated strategies and careful balancing efforts to attain and defend authentic, though limited, autonomous status. It pursued its identity and ideological agendas through unique policies, shaping living experiences for its residents.

BIOGRAPHY
Anran Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Cornell University, with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Peking University, Waseda University, and Yale University, as well as working experiences in Mongolia and the Caucasus. His research interests lie in the interaction between ethnonational identity and communist ideology in the Cold War era, particularly focusing on China’s Northeast Asian and Inner Asian borderlands. He has published on the reform of the Mongolian language writing system in Inner Mongolia and on the Sino-Korean dispute over the heritage of Goguryeo Kingdom.

PUBLICATIONS
“Between Communist Doctrine and Nationalist Agendas: Writing Reforms in Inner Mongolia, 1954-1980,” Modern China (published online September 24, 2020), DOI: 10.1177/0097700420948799
“From Ideological Alliance to Identity Clash: The Historical Origin of the 2004 Sino-Korean Goguryeo Controversies,” in Heritage as Aid and Diplomacy in Asia, ed. Philippe M.F. Peycam et al. (Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2020), 210-245.