Associate Professor of International Relations at the Blanquerna School of Communication and International Relations (Ramon Llull University) in Barcelona (Spain) and he is since 2017 the coordinator of the research group GLOBALCODES at the same School. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) (2012). He was visiting professor at the University of Sierra Leone (Fourah Bay College) between 2006 and 2008 and Visiting researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London) in 2008. He has published and edited several books, articles and policy papers on conflict analysis, post-conflict peacebuilding processes and development challenges, mainly focused on Africa and African countries such as Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Angola or Nigeria. He has also undertaken some consultancies and research for Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan or Conciliation Resources in Sierra Leone. He is also a member of the Board of the International Catalan Institute for Peace (ICIP) and an Associate researcher at the Barcelona International Affairs Center (CIDOB). He was appointed in September 2019 as the Delegate of the Rector for the Agenda 2030. Among his latest peer reviewed publications it is worth mentioning: “De la agenda normativa al 'giro pragmático': Causas, implicaciones y dilemas de la estrategia securitaria de la UE en el Sahel”, UNISCI Journal; “Whose Peace? Grappling with Local Ownership in Sierra Leone”, Peace and Conflict Studies, 2022, with Andreu Solà; “China in Africa: Assessing the Consequences for the Continent’s Agenda for Economic Regionalism”, Politics & Governance, 2022, with Artur Colom; or “Understanding Niger Delta’s violence from a World-Ecology perspective”, Revista de Estudios de Seguridad Internacional.
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Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain
The works gathered in this volume address diverse topics related with current global issues such as geopolitics of energy, climate change, development, the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, and capitalism. They do so by placing Africa at the epicenter of those issues. Indeed, while diverse in their areas of inquiry the chapters that constitute this book all share in common the methodological concern of (re)centering Africa in the study of global affairs.
By doing so the authors of this book recognize not only the importance of re-calibrating the place of Africa in the social sciences from a standpoint that does not marginalize the continent and its societies but that on the contrary, highlight their central and crucial role in them.
For instance, if we consider together the issue of climate change and development we find out that Africa, while being the continent that has less contributed to the global emissions of carbon dioxide is both the most affected by the ongoing extractive capitalist activities and their multiple negative impacts on its ecosystems and the one that has benefitted the less from them.
In fact, one of the main arguments of this book is to show how this marginalization of Africa’s place in the global political economy stems from a marginal position of the continent in social sciences and how by (re)framing it as the world’s epicenter we can shed light both on contemporary global affairs and epistemological issues regarding not only Africa but other societies of the Global South as well.