Jana Hönke

Jana Hönke is professor and chair for Sociology in Africa at the University of Bayreuth. She currently directs the ERC INFRAGLOB project Africa’s Infrastructure Globalities,the DFG project Crafting the space to govern: Non-state practices of legitimation in Africa, and is part of the Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict research network and the research network Conflicts.Meanings.Transitions. Her research is concerned with how governance practices are co-produced and contested, how they travel, and to what effect. Her current work examines how political geographies transform through South-South relations by studying the contested social and security arrangements around multinational companies and large-scale infrastructure projects in Africa. While doing multi-sited fieldwork including in Europe, China and Brazil, much of her work takes place in Sub-Saharan Africa with research conducted in South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Guinea.

Prof. Hönke is also the founder of the UBT Peace and Conflict research network, Deputy Spokesperson of the Bavarian Research Alliance Conflict, Peace and Security) and member of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy Hamburg (IFSH).

She is the author of ‘Transnational Business and Security Governance. Hybrid Practices in a Postcolonial World’ (2013), ‘The Global Making of Policing. Postcolonial Perspectives’ (with Mueller, 2016), and ‘Africa’s Global Infrastructures. South-South Transformation in Practice’ (with Cezne, Yang, 2023). Her articles have appeared in leading journals such as International Political Sociology, Security Dialogue, African Affairs, Governance, World Development, Global Sociology and Environment and Planning D. She is also a co-editor of the Spaces of Peace, Security and Development book series at Bristol University Press and serves on the boards of International Political Sociology, European Journal of International Relations and Security Dialogue.

Previously, she was an Associate Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow in International Relations at the University of Groningen. Prior to that she worked as a lecturer in International Relations at the Politics and International Relations Department, University of Edinburgh, and as a researcher at the SFB 700 Research Centre Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood, Freie Universität Berlin. She has been an interim professor at the Centre of Conflict Studies, Philipps-Universität Marburg 2015/16, and held visiting fellowships at the Centre for International Policy Studies and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, the Centre of Criminology, University of Cape Town and the Sociology of Work Unit, University of Witwatersrand. She holds a Magister (MA) in African Studies, Political Science and Economics (University of Leipzig), and a PhD in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin.

 

Link: https://www.african-sociology.uni-bayreuth.de/en/team/jana-hoenke/index.php