Scholarship

A scholar working at the intersection of Critical Development Studies, Critical African Studies and Critical Race Studies, Robtel centres her research on how structural transformation is conceived and contested by local, national and transnational actors from ‘crisis’-affected regions of the so-called ‘Global South’. She has conducted multi-sited fieldwork across four continents, including in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Denmark, Ghana, India, Lebanon, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, the United Kingdom and United States. Her core areas of expertise include the political economy of development, migration, race, citizenship, conflict, post-war recovery, and the politics of governance, all with respect to Africa. Robtel’s current book project, Africa’s ‘Negro’ Republics, examines how slavery, colonialism and neoliberalism in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, respectively, have shaped the adoption and maintenance of legal clauses barring non-blacks from obtaining citizenship in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

She is author of the monograph Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia (Cambridge University Press, 2021), which won both the 2022 African Politics Conference Group (APCG) Best Book Award and the 2023 African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award for Excellence in African Writing as well as contributed to the passage of Liberia’s dual citizenship law. Robtel has also published in scholarly journals including Third World Quarterly, Development and Change, Democratization, Migration Studies, African Affairs, Review of African Political Economy, Citizenship Studies, Liberian Studies Journal (LSJ), Humanitas; and edited book volumes including The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies (2021), Oxford Encyclopedia of African Politics (2020), The New Humanitarians in International Practice: Emerging Actors and Contested Principles (2016), Leadership in Post-Colonial Africa: Trends Transformed by Independence (2014), Tales, Tellers and Talemaking: Critical Studies on Literary Stylistics and Narrative Styles in Contemporary African Literature (2010), From the Slave Trade to ‘Free’ Trade: How Trade Undermines Democracy and Justice in Africa (2007). She gives presentations at universities across the globe and engages increasingly with policymakers and practitioners through consulting and invited talks.

Monograph

(2021) Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Journal Articles

(2024) “Stopping Firestone and Starting a Citizen ‘Revolution from Below’: Reflections on the Enduring Exploitation of Liberian Land and Labour.” Third World Quarterly 45(1): 61-78.

(2020) “De-centring the ‘White Gaze’ of Development.” Development and Change 51(3): 729-745.

(2020) “‘We Don’t Know Who Be Who’: Post-party Politics, Forum Shopping and Liberia’s 2017 Elections.” Democratization 27 (5): 758-776.

(2018) “Between Rootedness and Rootlessness: How Sedentarist and Nomadic Metaphysics Simultaneously Challenge and Reinforce (Dual) Citizenship Claims for Liberia.” Migration Studies 6 (3): 400-419.

(2017) “Liberia, Ebola and the Pitfalls of State-building: Reimagining Domestic and Diasporic Public Authority.” African Affairs 116 (465): 648-670.

(2017) “Liberia’s Run-up to 2017: Continuity and Change in a Long History of Electoral Politics.” Review of African Political Economy 44 (152): 322-335.

(2016) “Birthplace, Bloodline and Beyond: How ‘Liberian Citizenship’ Is Currently Constructed in Liberia and Abroad.” Citizenship Studies 20 (6-7): 811-829.

Book Chapters

(2021) “Race in/and Development” in Henry Veltmeyer and Paul Bowles (eds.) The Essential Guide to Critical Development Studies (2nd edition). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge: 31-39.

(2020) “Women, Equality, and Citizenship in Contemporary Africa” in Oxford Encyclopedia of African Politics. New York, New York: Oxford University Press: 1834-1856.

(2017) “Silver Lining, Silver Bullet or Neither? Post-War Opportunities and Challenges for Liberian Diasporas in Development” in Liberian Development Conference Anthology: Engendering Collective Action for Advancing Liberia’s Development. Monrovia, Liberia: USAID/Liberia, Embassy of Sweden and University of Liberia: 213-230.

(2016) “The Invisibility of a Third Humanitarian Domain” in Zeynep Sezgin and Dennis Dijkzeul (eds.) The New Humanitarians in International Practice: Emerging Actors and Contested Principles. London, UK and New York, New York: Routledge: 213-231.

(2014) “Patriarchy, Power Distance and Female Presidency in Liberia” in Baba G. Jallow (ed.) Leadership in Post-Colonial Africa: Trends Transformed by Independence. London, UK: Palgrave MacMillan: 169-187.