benabdl@wfu.edu

I am Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University. My research focuses on Global South approaches in international relations theory, foreign policy, infrastructure, mega-projects, politics of the past, memory politics, and nostalgia. My book, Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations (July 2020 ), probes the type of power mechanisms that project, diffuse, and circulate China-Africa relations. The crux of the argument is that it is necessary to take into account the processes of knowledge production, social capital formation, networks, and skills transfers in Chinese foreign policy towards African states to fully understand how power permeates these encounters. The book was reviewed in over a dozen outlets and has been subject of several roundtables and podcast discussions. For more details, check out the Book tab or the book’s webpage! My scholarship has been published in International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, African Affairs, The Review of International Political Economy, Third World Quarterly, Journal of International Relations and Development, African Studies Quarterly, Global Studies Quarterly among others. My research was featured and/or quoted in Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Le Monde, The Economist, BBC, The New York Times, CNN, Voice of America, Sputnik International, Mail & Guardian, The Diplomat, The South China Morning Post, The New Republic, SupChina, The Strait Times, among others. In addition to my scholarly research and teaching, I also regularly participate in workshops, roundtables, and consultation briefings that aim to bring academic communities and foreign policymaking circles closer. In September 2022, I took on a new challenge by joining the editorial board of PS: Political Science & Politics (an APSA journal) as a co-editor for a four-year term. I am now working on a new book which studies political nostalgia and the uses of the past to shape alternative visions for Global Order. One of the cases I am interested in is Chinese government-issued discourses and narratives about the New Silk Road being a continuation of Sino-centric 15th Century Indian Ocean exchanges. The project investigates the degree to which Chinese foreign policy is successful in deploying nostalgic narratives about the Ancient Silk Road and the Sino-centric ordering that ensued from it to exercise influence on elites and citizens of countries along the New Maritime Silk Road.

Mali, Algeria, China, Aid, Security, Development