On the geography of contentious collective action in Africa

尽管战争减少了，但非洲似乎正在成为一个更加暴力的地方。过去二十年来，虽然非洲大陆发生的主要内战和武装冲突的次数有所减少，但小规模武装冲突和其他各种形式的有争议的集体行动的总体频率有所增加。我们该如何解释呢？我研究了两个可能对这个问题有所启发的过程。首先，非洲正在经历一个政治和制度转型时期，各国政权接受多党民主，并通过组建包容性执政联盟来维持权力。有人认为，这一进程改变了围绕武装冲突和社会群体之间使用暴力的动机。在这一民主化进程的同时，非洲正在经历迅速的城市化，这正在改变非洲大陆，并被认为引起了有争议的集体行动的表达方式和性质的变化。通过一系列的五篇论文，我的博士学位支持了有关非洲大陆上最严重形式的武装冲突减少以及其他不那么激烈的争议行动（如骚乱和抗议）兴起的说法。然而，我没有发现任何证据表明冲突的地理特征正在变得更加城市化。相反，我表明，与城市化和民主化的平行趋势相关联，冲突在空间上变得更加分散，而且通常不那么激烈。这个奖学金的目的是双重的。首先，它通过学术出版物、会议演讲以及与政策和学术利益相关者的接触，巩固了我的博士工作的影响。其次，它通过制定未来工作计划来促进我的职业发展，在我的博士研究的基础上，研究非洲城市中环境变化/危害、城市化、政治和冲突之间的复杂关系。准备3篇未发表的博士论文手稿，投稿至高影响力学术期刊。第一，采用新颖的理论和方法来调查内阁组成在减少非洲国家武装冲突中的作用。第二，部署时空分析的新技术，以了解非洲暴力的分布。第三部分是非洲城市数据集（ACD），这是第一个此类数据集，测量了非洲城市地区的空间、人口、环境和政治属性。我还将在美国地理学家协会和美国政治科学协会的年度会议上向学术受益人介绍后两篇文章。此外，我将为英国援助和发展部门的成员召集一个研讨会，以最大限度地发挥我的博士研究的政策影响。研讨会将展示ACD作为政策制定和分析的工具，生成来自用户的案例研究，并更好地了解非学术用户的需求，以便为数据集的未来迭代提供信息。最后，这项奖学金概述了未来的研究计划，以我的博士研究为基础，探讨非洲环境和人口变化与城市政治和安全之间的因果关系。这代表了一种新的跨学科和混合定量方法来回答有关环境变化和非洲城市转型对整个非洲大陆安全和政治的影响的问题。资金申请将提交给Leverhulme早期职业奖学金和ESRC新研究者补助金。我将完成对奥斯陆和平研究所为期10天的访问，以扩大我的专业网络，与知名学者讨论研究思路，并探索合作的潜力。我还将在Essex Summer School完成方法培训，提高我在调查实验设计和分析以及机器学习方面的研究能力。

Despite the decline of war, Africa appears to be becoming a more violent place. While the number of major civil wars and armed conflicts occurring on the continent has declined over the last two decades, the overall frequency of small-scale armed conflicts and other variegated forms of contentious collective action has increased. How do we explain this? I investigated two processes that might shed some light on this question. First, Africa is undergoing a period of political and institutional transition as regimes embrace multiparty democracy and maintain power by forming inclusive ruling coalitions. This process, it is argued, has changed the incentives surrounding armed conflict and the use of violence among social groups. Concurrent to this process of democratisation, Africa is experiencing rapid urbanisation which is transforming the continent and is thought to have caused changes in the patterns and nature of expression of contentious collective action.Through a series of five essays, my PhD supported claims surrounding a decline in the most severe forms of armed conflict on the continent and the rise of other, less intense forms of contentious action such as riots and protests. However, I found no evidence to suggest that the geography of conflict is becoming more urban in character. Rather, I showed that, linked to parallel trends in urbanisation and democratisation, conflict is becoming more spatially diffuse and generally less intense.The aims of this Fellowship are twofold. First it consolidates the impact of my PhD work through academic publications, conference presentations, and engagement with policy and academic stakeholders. Second, it facilitates my career progression by developing programme of future work that, building upon my PhD research, investigates the complex relationships between environmental change/hazards, urbanization, politics, and conflict in African cities.I will prepare and submit three unpublished manuscripts from my PhD thesis to high impact academic journals. The first, deploys novel theory and methods to investigate the role of cabinet composition in reducing armed conflict within a sample of African countries. The second, deploys new techniques for spatio-temporal analysis to understand the distribution of violence in Africa. The third, presents the African Cities Dataset (ACD) which, as the first dataset of its kind, measures the spatial, demographic, environmental, and political attributes of urban areas in Africa. I will also present the latter two articles to academic beneficiaries at the annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers and the American Political Science Association.Additionally, I will convene a workshop for members of the UK aid and development sectors to maximise the policy impact of my PhD research. The workshop will demonstrate the ACD as a tool for policy development and analysis, generate case studies from users, and better understand the needs of non-academic users to inform future iterations of the dataset.Finally, this fellowship outlines future research programme building upon my PhD research to interrogate the causal pathways linking environmental and demographic change to urban politics and security in Africa. This represents a novel interdisciplinary and mixed quantitative methods approach to answering questions surrounding the consequences of environmental change and Africa's urban transition on security and politics across the continent. Funding applications will be summitted to the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and the ESRC New Investigator Grant. I will complete a 10-day visit to the Peace Research Institute Oslo to extend my professional network, discuss research ideas with high profile academics, and explore the potential for collaborations. I will also complete methods training at the Essex Summer School to improve my research skills in survey experiment design and analysis and machine learning.