International relations and political theory Professor Siba Grovogui of Johns Hopkins University will deliver two lectures at York. The first is on Thursday as part of the York Centre for International & Security Studies (YCISS) Distinguished Critical Thinkers in World Politics Seminar Series and the second is the Interdisciplinary African Graduate Studies John S. Saul Seminar on Friday.
As part of the Distinguished Critical Thinkers in World Politics Seminar Series, Grovogui will present “Your Blues Ain’t My Blues: The Constitution of International Security and Insecurity at the Edge of an African Landscape”, which will examine the new Tuareg rebellions in Mali and Niger in the context of the US Trans-Sahara Countererrorism Initiative.
Right: Siba Grovogui
Grovogui will address two seldom-explored conditions of civil strife and insecurity in post-colonial Africa. The first is political order – the adoption by African states of globalized notions of order and security that undermine regional and national systems that had previously sustained life and secured the well-being of populations. The second is constitutional, a condition of insecurity resulting from political order. It is the failure of post-colonial states to align the constitutional order on the exigencies of social life, specifically the securitization of domestic systems of production, distribution, solidarity and justice.
The lecture will take place Nov. 5, from 2:30 to 4:30pm, at 519 York Research Tower, Keele campus.
For the John S. Saul Seminar, Grovogui will present "Can 'Independence' be More Odious than Colonialism?: Some Thoughts on Post-colonial African Politics" on Nov. 6, from 12:30 to 2:30pm, in the Verney Room, S674 Ross Building, Keele campus.
A professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University since 1995, Grovogui is a specialist in international relations theory and political theory, and has written frequently about African sovereignty. He is the author of Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law (University of Minnesota Press, 1996) and Beyond Eurocentrism and Anarchy: Memories of International Order and Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), as well as the European Journal of International Relations article “Regimes of Sovereignty: International Morality and the African Condition”.
Grovogui is currently completing manuscripts on human rights and on the genealogy of the "international". He is also collaborating on a US National Science Foundation funded project on the rule of law under a World Bank inititated experiment in Chad around an oil and pipeline development.
Previously, Grovogui taught at Eastern Michigan University. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a law degree from the Institut Superieure Polytechnique Gamal Abdel Nasser in Guinea.
The John S. Saul Seminar is co-sponsored by Founders College, the Centre for Refugee Studies, the Department of Social Science and the International Development Studies Program.
For more information about the Distinguished Critical Thinkers in World Politics Seminar Series, visit the YCISS Web site.