Nathalie Raunet

After my BA and first year of Master at Paris X Nanterre in English literature and civilisation, I changed paths and decided to focus on Africa in my second year of Master in political science at Sciences Po Toulouse. I continued my studies in the UK with a Master of Science in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford, and a PhD at the University of Birmingham. Immediately after my viva, I was hired as a Postdoctoral Researcher at SCRIPTS Berlin where I was affiliated to the Cluster Professorship ‘Contemporary Politics and Societies in Africa’ and the Research Unit Borders. This then led me to take up my present position as Assistant Professor in DASA.

I am particularly interested in borders, boundaries, and ideas of belonging and citizenship. My doctoral thesis looked at how political communities are constructed with regards to membership, in the borderlands between Ghana and Togo. I provided an inter-scale (local, regional, transnational, national levels) and interdisciplinary analysis of the making and unmaking of political belonging in this region.

Recently, I have focused my interest on transnational authoritarianism. More particularly, I am interested in state strategies of legitimation as responses to diaspora strategies of delegitimation abroad.