The seminar will be live. Virtual viewers may register here

The Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, this seminar series prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social, and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development as well as Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures, and societies that call Africa home, and wish to explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development practice.

The Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, this seminar series prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social, and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development as well as Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures, and societies that call Africa home, and wish to explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development practice.

You’re invited to a hybrid event featuring distinguished scholar-practitioners of medicine, psychiatry, and law, all working to improve our understanding of how we document, adjudicate and treat migrant trauma as part of immigration proceedings. Four panels will examine topics such as the intersection of psychology and law for child asylum seekers and the use of forensic assessments in deportation defense.

Over lunch the Workshop will feature Keynote Speaker Juan E. Méndez, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence and Faculty Director, Anti-Torture Initiative, Washington College of Law, American University, and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

This is a great event for anyone who is interested in medical-legal research, human rights, and migration.

Co-Sponsors:

Cornell Law School Berger International Legal Studies Program

Cornell University Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies - @EinaudiCenter

Cornell Law School Migration and Human Rights Program

Cornell University Migrations Initiative - @CornellMig

The Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, this seminar series prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social, and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development as well as Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures, and societies that call Africa home, and wish to explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development practice.

The Issues in African Development Seminar Series examines critical concerns in contemporary Africa using a different theme each semester. The seminars provide a forum for participants to explore alternative perspectives and exchange ideas. They are also a focal activity for students and faculty interested in African development. In addition, this seminar series prepares students for higher level courses on African economic, social, and political development. The presentations are designed for students who are interested in development as well as Africa’s place in global studies, want to know about the peoples, cultures, and societies that call Africa home, and wish to explore development theories and alternate viewpoints on development practice.

James Yékú is an Assistant Professor of African and African American studies at the University of Kansas, where he leads the African digital humanities program. He is the author of Cultural Netizenship: Social Media, Popular Culture, and Performance in Nigeria (Indiana University Press), and a book of poetry, Where the Baedeker Leads (Mawenzi House, Toronto). His current digital projects include Digital Nollywood, an Omeka-based collection of vintage film posters from Nigeria. Yékú is a 2022 fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany.

Community involvement in public services delivery is widely acknowledged in the literature and practice as being pivotal to local development initiatives especially in cities of the global south. However, the nature and role of social composition of communities is rarely explored. This presentation applies a case study research approach to retrospectively analyse how the social make-up of local communities and their organizations influenced coproduction of public services in a low income informal settlement in Dar es Salaam city. It is argued that unpacking community level contextual factors including local resources, socio-cultural and institutional structures, partnerships and networks is key to addressing the challenges that produce and sustain poverty, inequalities and exclusion in low income settlements. The paper also calls for search for more knowledge on how partnerships and community engagement can be sustained in low income settlements.

Wilbard Kombe is a Professor at Ardhi University, the Institute of Human Settlements Studies, Tanzania. He received his PhD from the Technical University of Dortmund, (TUD). His research works have focused on governance of informal urbanization, land management and administration; disasters management and livelihoods of the poor; urban inequality and coproduction of basic infrastructure services; and climate change and urban vulnerability. He has also been extensively involved in research activities in several countries in the Sub-Sahara Africa.

Kombe has also implemented several real-life projects undertaken in Tanzania covering a wide range of subjects. This includes large projects on coproduction of basic infrastructure services and livelihoods in low income settlements funded by UNDP, Ford Foundation and local government authorities LGAs in Tanzania.

Robtel Neajai Pailey is an IAD guest speaker who will speak to this question and more at a lecture based around her work in Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia.

Pailey is an assistant professor in international social and public policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). A Liberian scholar-activist working at the intersection of Critical Development Studies, Critical African Studies and Critical Race Studies, she centers her research on how structural transformation is conceived and contested by local, national and transnational actors from ‘crisis’-affected regions of the so-called Global South.(Cambridge University Press, 2021). Hers is the first book to evaluate domestic and diasporic constructions and practices of Liberian citizenship across space and time and their myriad implications for development. In this seminar drawing on rich life histories from over two hundred in-depth interviews in West Africa, Europe, and North America, Pailey uses a contested dual citizenship bill, introduced in Liberia in 2008 but never passed, as an entry point to ask broader questions about how citizenship is differentiated by class, gender, race, ethnicity, etc, and whether dual citizenship actually reproduces inequalities. She develops a new model for conceptualizing citizenship within the context of ‘crisis’-affected states while offering a compelling critique of the neoliberal framing of diasporas and donors as the panacea to post-war reconstruction.

Cosponsored by the Migrations initiative.