Please join us for an expert discussion about research on and in Africa. We will consider new frontiers in research methodologies, including new (and old) challenges of undertaking fieldwork in Africa, how African agency and co-production of knowledge are - or should be - incorporated into scholarly work, and the role of interdisciplinary theory in social sciences research.

Hosted by the Africa Research Group as part of Africa Week 2026, the event will be chaired by students of the BA War and International Politics in Africa course, Department of War Studies, and will feature Q&A with our expert panellists.

About the speakers

Dr Clement Sefa-Nyarko is a Lecturer in Security, Development and Leadership in Africa at the African Leadership Centre at King’s. As an academic and international development practitioner, he brings over a decade of experience designing and leading projects across Africa and the Asia Pacific. His work focuses on design thinking and methodological innovation in research and programme evaluation, with extensive field experience in contexts including Ghana, Kenya, South Sudan, and Nigeria.

His research interests include natural resource governance, political theories of the state, social protection, security, and leadership. Dr Sefa-Nyarko holds a PhD from La Trobe University, where he critically examined the natural resource curse through political theory, as well as MA degrees in Population Studies and Conflict and in Security and Development from King’s and the University of Ghana, and a BA in Sociology with the Study of Religions.

Dr Julia Gallagher is a professor of Politics and Development, with research focusing on state- and democracy-building and how citizens’ understandings of the state are shaped by colonial legacies and international relationships. She recently completed an ERC project on African State Architecture, and her forthcoming book, State-Building: Architecture and Authority in Africa, will be published in 2026. She is co-convenor of the Democracy and Development Research Group in DID.

Before joining King’s in 2023, Dr Gallagher worked at SOAS and Royal Holloway, University of London, and served as a specialist advisor to the House of Lords’ Inquiry into UK–Africa relations (2019–20). She is a Visiting Scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, serves on the editorial boards of African Affairs and Africa Spectrum, and sits on the advisory board of the John and Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies at the University of Bradford. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Dr Portia Roelofs is a Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Political Economy. Dr Roelofs’ research lies at the intersection of development studies, African politics and political theory. Her work brings a critical approach to questions of governance, democracy and accountability, and problematises the political-economies that shape knowledge production in these fields. Her book Good governance in Nigeria: Rethinking accountability and transparency in the twenty-first century draws on in-depth qualitative fieldwork in southwest Nigeria to propose new, socially-embedded conceptions of accountability and transparency.

Dr Roelofs has degrees from Oxford, SOAS and LSE, and has held post-doctoral fellowships at the LSE and St Anne’s College, Oxford. She has been a visiting researcher at the universities of Maiduguri and Ibadan, Nigeria. She sits on the editorial board of the African Arguments book series and is co-convenor of the Global South Research Group.