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Staff Profile

Dr Laura Routley

Reader in African Politics

  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 7743
  • Address: Room 4.50
    4th Floor, Henry Daysh Building
    Claremont Road
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background


I am interested in how imprisonment is memorialised, how colonialism is remembered, and how these play into contemporary politics locally, nationally and internationally.  Her work is highly interdisciplinary, exploring the spatial and architectural, as well as the political, aspects of how colonial sites (particularly sites of incarceration) are produced as heritage or memorial sites or reused in other ways. Her work therefore engages with the coalescence of space and time around locations and moments of colonial (especially carceral) violence.  


I am Primary Investigator of the Afterlives of Colonial Incarceration: African Prisons, Architecture and Politics project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust [RPG-2021-386]. The project explores the memory politics around sites of incarceration in Africa, in three countries Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. It investigates struggles over how these sites have been repurposed (or not), through the preservation or alteration of buildings and spaces. These explorations serve to illuminate postcolonial tensions around identity, Africa’s place in the international, and imagined futures.


I am also the Co-director for the Centre for Heritage (NUCore) at Newcastle University - Our People | Centre for Heritage | Newcastle University


In previous work I have explored a range of themes mainly focused on West Africa (Nigeria and Ghana). These include: Prisons, Pentecostalism, Hybridity, NGOs, and Corruption. I have also written on Developmental States and Political Economy Analysis used by Development actors. 

 

Qualifications:

 

PhD International Politics, Aberystwyth University 2006-2010: The negotiation of 'corruption' by NGOs in Eastern Nigeria: Engagements with local culture and global governance. [ESRC Funded]

 

MSc (Econ) Postcolonial Politics, University of Wales Aberystwyth 2004-2005

 

BSc (Econ) International Relations 2:1, University of Wales Aberystwyth 1995-1998

 

Previous Appointments Held:

 

Research Associate: Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre University of Manchester. June 2011 – July 2012

 

Teaching Assistant: School of Geography, Politics and Sociology Newcastle University. September 2010 – May 2011

 

Memberships:

  • Member of Royal African Society and the African Studies Association of the UK
  • Member of British International Studies Association
  • Member of BISA Africa and International Studies working group.
  • Member of BISA Colonial Postcolonial Decolonial working group

Member of the Carceral Geography Working Group Member of the Memory Studies Association Associate Fellow of The Higher Education Academy   

Research

Current Projects: 

 

Afterlives of colonial incarceration: African prisons, architecture, and politics

Leverhulme Trust funded project (RPG-2021-386) 


Carceral practices were central to colonialism and prisons were often the first buildings erected during the colonisation of Africa. Sites of imprisonment are then key sites of colonial heritage. This project explores the memory politics of former sites of colonial imprisonment in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. It investigates struggles over how these sites have been repurposed (or not), through the preservation or alteration of buildings and spaces. It illuminates postcolonial tensions around identity, Africa’s place in the international, and imagined futures.



Operation Safe Corridor

Research undertaken with Centre for Democracy and Development, Nigeria.

 

As part of its attempts to address the threat of Boko Haram in North East Nigeria the Nigerian government under President Muhammadu Buhari set up Operation Safe Corridor (OSC). OSC is a custodial program, with the major aim to deradicalise, rehabilitate and reintegrate repentant Boko Haram ex-combatants into society. This project examines how the process of rehabilitation and reintegration is being conceived and practiced through OSC. Key findings have shown the importance of greater involvement of the communities into which ex-combatants are to be reintegrated as well as the need for transparency around how the programme is undertaken and how ex-combatants are screened. Report available here.   


 

Previous work: 

The Politics of Prisons: West African prisons and forms of governance

Prisons in Africa were instituted under colonialism with a distinctly different remit and purpose to their contemporary penal institutions in Europe which, following previous reforms, focused on the reformation of the prisoner. Given this institutional history this research aims to understand how the purpose of prisons is understood, both by inmates and prison officers in contemporary postcolonial West Africa.  

 

Negotiating Corruption: NGOs in Eastern Nigeria

NGOs are usually seen as anti-corruption agents. This research, based on participant observation and interviews with NGO workers, explores their role in obtaining accountability from the state and the way in which they undertake grey practices in order to get the outcomes that they perceive a fully functioning state would produce. This complicates their role as anti-corruption agents and also highlights the assumptions within the literature about how the state is held to account. 

 

Political Economy Analyses for Development

Research on the use of Political Economy Analyses by development agencies tracing the growth of the practice and the purposes that development agencies see the analyses as fulfilling. I am particularly interested in the ways in which these analyses attempt to present complex situations as knowable and governable. 

 

PhD Supervision 

Given these themes I would be very interested to supervise PhD students who wanted to examine the following themes in African contexts. 

  • Prisons
  • The politics of memory / heritage 
  • Decolonial / Postcolonial approaches 
  • Governance / the state
  • NGOs 
  • Corruption 

 

Current PhD Students

Heather Proctor

Yusuf Patel

Brightman Makoni

Tolu Olufarati

Teaching

Modules taught on:


Undergraduate modules:

POL2088: The Politics of Africa: Africa's Place in Global Politics 

POL2078: Critical International Politics

POL2114: The Politics of Race 

POL3101: Postcolonial Politics



Postgraduate modules:

POL8043: Development, Environment and Politics 

POL8023: Africa -The Politics of International Development

SOC 8100: Politics of Development and Social Struggle in Latin America



Also Undergraduate and Postgraduate dissertation supervision

Publications