Dr Biruk Terrefe is 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. Before joining DPIR, he was a DPhil Candidate at Oxford's Department of International Development.
Areas of Interest
- History and Politics of the Horn of Africa;
- State-building and Development;
- State-Society Relations;
- Federalism & Local Government;
- Politics of Infrastructure & Planning;
- Urban Politics
Publications
- Terrefe, Biruk (with Harry Verhoeven) (2024).'The road (not) taken: The contingencies of infrastructure and sovereignty in the Horn of Africa.' Political Geography 110, 103070
- Terrefe, Biruk (2022) 'Infrastructures of Renaissance: tangible discourses in the EPRDF’s Ethiopia ', Critical African Studies
- Terrefe, Biruk (with Tom Lavers, Fana Gebresenbet )(2021) 'Powering development: the political economy of electricity generation in the EPRDF’s Ethiopia ', FutureDAMS Working Paper 014
- Terrefe, Biruk (2020) 'Urban layers of political rupture: the "new" politics of Addis Ababa’s megaprojects ', Journal of Eastern African Studies 14 (3) : 375-95
- Terrefe, Biruk (with Philipp Rode, Nuno F. da Cruz )(2020) 'Cities and the governance of transport interfaces: Ethiopia's new rail systems ', Transport Policy 91 : 76-94
