Nathalie Raunet

After my BA and first year of Master at Paris X Nanterre (France) in English literature and civilisation, I changed paths and decided to focus solely on Africa in my second year of Master in political science at Sciences Po Toulouse (France). I continued my studies in the UK with a Master of Science in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford focusing on borders and mobility in West Africa. My PhD in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology (DASA) at the University of Birmingham focused on citizenship and belonging in the Ghana-Togo borderlands in relation to the vote. My academic path has been heavily influenced by interdisciplinarity.

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’ (Otto-Suhr-Institut) and the Research Unit Borders. This then led me to take up my first position as Assistant Professor in DASA, where I stayed for three years and taught many modules in a variety of themes and disciplines.

I am now continuing my path as Assistant Professor in IDD, working as Co-Investigator on an ESRC Responsive Mode project: ‘Global Britain, Backlash, and the Politics of “values” in Contemporary UK-Africa Policy’, under the leadership of Jonathan Fisher (PI), and with other Co-Is (Niheer Dasandi, IDD and Molly Sundberg, University of Stockholm).

Recent Research

My most recent research will soon be published at Cambridge University Press, in the African Studies Series. The book is entitled ‘Political Belonging in the Ghana-Togo Borderlands: Citizenship and the Vote at the Margins of the State’. This book analyses how political belonging is constructed and how it interacts with the nation-state in the Ghana-Togo borderlands, especially when the community lies across borders, or at another level than the nation-state (at a local, regional, transnational level). Based on archival research, interviews, oral tradition and newspaper analysis, the book uncovers a pattern based on legitimating narratives of indigeneity at each scale. This pattern contextualises the electoral debate on cross-border voting in Ghana in 2016, a practice that existed before independence, and was instrumentalised by Ghanaian and Togolese heads of state in the 1990s at a time of tense diplomatic relations. This book adopts an interdisciplinary approach to provide a holistic understanding of political culture by connecting the history of the border region with contemporary power struggles in political science and issues of belonging and citizenship in anthropology since the turn of the twentieth century.

Current Research

ESRC Responsive Mode project: ‘Global Britain, Backlash, and the Politics of “values” in Contemporary UK-Africa Policy’. Jonathan Fisher (PI, IDD), Nathalie Raunet (Co-I, IDD), Niheer Dasandi (Co-I, IDD), Molly Sundberg (Co-I, University of Stockholm). 3 years (2025-2028)