• Presentation
• CV

Primary fields of research

• Certification of citizenship
• Legal identity and civil registration
• Policy practice and processes
• Policy interactions, movement, and momentums
• Lived realities of policies at institutions
• State building and governance
• UN Sustainable Development Goal 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions)

Current research

My research is placed within the international collaborative research project, Certifications of Citizenship in Africa (CERTIZENS). Within this, my research and PhD project explores questions concerning the formation, process, mobility, and local adaptations of so-called ‘global’ policies, specifically related to legal identity documentations, civil registration, and citizenship. Among other things, this entails a focus on the dynamics of policy processes and practices within and between such multilateral organisations, such as the United Nations and the World Bank, that are engaged in promoting policies and ideas concerning identification and registration, and their articulations with national governments in Africa – specifically in Ghana and Uganda. In order to understand the politics and political economy of these, my analytical approach is influenced by critical policy studies and travelling policy models.

I consider the policies to be my case study; I view the case study as a set of concentric stories at multiple levels – all providing stories and realities within the story. The three stories focus on:

1. The global policy community: interactions and policy mobility concerning legal identity, identification management and civil registration
2. Ghana: the practice and the significance of birth registration and birth certificates
3. Uganda: the national registration system and the national ID document and the interactions with international organisations

 

Supervisors

Supervisor: Prof. Amanda Hammar, Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen

Second supervisor: Prof. Andrea Behrends, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science: Anthropology in Africa, University of Bayreuth