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.
Completed in December 2023.
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Journal articles and special issues( ) Infrastructures of Renaissance: tangible discourses in the EPRDF’s Ethiopia . Critical African Studies( ) Urban layers of political rupture: the "new" politics of Addis Ababa’s megaprojects . Journal of Eastern African Studies 14 (3) 375-95( ) Cities and the governance of transport interfaces: Ethiopia's new rail systems . Transport Policy 91 76-94
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Working papers( ) Powering development: the political economy of electricity generation in the EPRDF’s Ethiopia . FutureDAMS Working Paper 014
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Other publications( ) Book review "Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production 1964-2016" . Journal of Development Studies
