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Research interests

History and Politics of the Horn of Africa; Ethiopia; Developmental States; Bureaucracies and Development; State-Society Relations; Federalism & Local Government; Political Economy of Infrastructure & Planning; Urban Politics. 

Biruk Terrefe

Biruk Terrefe was a doctoral student at ODID. He is now a Departmental Lecturer in African Politics. His research broadly focuses on how infrastructure projects and the control of urban spaces are integral to the politics of state-building in the Horn of Africa. His recent work has been on the Ethiopian state and the tensions between the ruling party’s centralised developmental ambitions and the ethnically federated architecture of the state. This tension becomes particularly evident in the study of infrastructure, as highly contested material spaces of political bargaining. He is also interested in the politics of urban spaces and the rapid urbanization witnessed across Africa. 

Biruk holds a DPhil and an MPhil from Oxford Department of International Development and a BA from Jacobs University Bremen. 

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