Professor Paul Nugent (PhD, FRHS)
Professor of Comparative African History
Contact details
- Tel: +44 (0)131 650 3879
- Email: Paul.Nugent@ed.ac.uk
- Web: Centre for African Studies profile
Address
- Street
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Centre of African Studies, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15A George Square
- City
- Post code
Background
I am a graduate of the University of Cape Town with an MA and a PhD from SOAS (London). I have spent most of my academic career researching borderlands in West Africa, involving a significant amount of knowledge exchange activity. MY ERC Advanced Grant (finished 2022) dealt with "Transport Corridors, Border Towns and Port Cities" in three regions of Africa, which enabled me to do some research and publish on East Africa as well. More recently I have also been working on the history of South African wine and temperance in global perspective. I am currently moving into wine and cultural heritage, comparing South Africa, Italy and France.
Qualifications
B.A. (Hons), Cape Town
M.A. (SOAS)
Ph.D. SOAS
Responsibilities & affiliations
Founder (2008) and Chair of the African Borderlands Research Network (ABORNE)
Former President of AEGIS
Current PhD students supervised
Name - Degree - Thesis topic - Supervision type - Link
- - PhD - Social history of the BaSotho people in the Dewure and Mungezi Purchase Areas (Zimbabwe) - Primary -
Research summary
Places:
- Africa
Themes:
- Comparative & Global History
- Culture
- Imperialism
- Politics
Periods:
- Nineteenth Century
- Twentieth Century & After
Research interests
- History of Wine in South Africa
- Global Temperance
- Borderlands in West Africa
- African State
Project activity
Having completed a history of the South African wine industry, working on phylloxera and the making of international scientific co-operation
Research projects
Current project grants
BA, "Border Festivals, Partitioned Communities and Practical Governance in West Africa" (£50,000) [BA Tackling the UK's International Challenges]
Past project grants
ERC Advanced Grant (2.5 million Euros): "African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns and Port Cities in Transition" [AFRIGOS] - ended June 2022
ESRC/DFID (£500,000) "A Comparative Analysis of Ex-Combatants' Economic and Socio-Political Power During and After War" - ended 2020.
Leverhulme project on "Race, Taste and the Grape", 2008
The list below is a subset of the information held on the University of Edinburgh PURE system, and includes Books, Chapters, Articles and Conference contributions. For a full list, including details of other publication types (e.g. reviews), please see the Edinburgh Research Explorer page for Professor Paul Nugent.
Books - Authored
Nugent, P. (2019) Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa: The Centrality of the Margins. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University PressDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139105828
Nugent, P., Amoah, M., Aning, K. and Annan, N. (2015) A Decade of Ghana: Politics, Economy and Society, 2004-13. Leiden: BrillDOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004310940
Nugent, P. (2012) Africa Since Independence: A Comparative History. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Nugent, P., Dorman, S. and Daniel, H. (2007) Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa. Brill
Nugent, P. (2003) Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens of the Ghana-Togo Frontier: The Lie of the Borderlands Since 1914. James Currey Ltd
Nugent, P. and Asiwaju, A. (1996) African Boundaries: Barriers, Conduits and Opportunities. London: Pinter
Books - Edited
Nugent, P. and Lamarque, H. (eds.) (2022) Transport Corridors in Africa. Rochester: Boydell and Brewer
Horakova, H., Nugent, P. and Skalnik, P. (eds.) (2011) Africa: Power and Powerlessness. Lit Verlag
Engel, U. and Nugent, P. (eds.) (2009) Respacing Africa. BrillDOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004178335.i-215
Locatelli, F. and Nugent, P. (eds.) (2009) African Cities: Competing Claims on Urban Spaces. BrillDOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004162648.i-308
Nugent, P., Trudell, B., King, K. and McGrath, S. (eds.) (2002) Africa's Young Majority: Victims, Meanings, Actors. Edinburgh University Press
Articles
Falisse, J., Macdonald, R., Molony, T. and Nugent, P. (2021) Why have so many African leaders died of COVID-19?. BMJ Global Health, 6(5), pp. 1-6DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005587
Soi, I. and Nugent, P. (2017) Peripheral urbanism in Africa: Border towns and twin towns in Africa. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 32(4), pp. 535-556DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2016.1196601
Nugent, P. (2014) Modernity, tradition, and intoxication: Comparative lessons from South Africa and West Africa. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, 222(suppl 9), pp. 126-145DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtt032
Leoussi, A., Spence, J., Nugent, P. and Green, E. (2013) Dreams and Nightmares of Nationhood: The Obi Igwara Special Memorial Event to mark 50 Years of Decolonization in Africa, 1960-2010. Nations and Nationalism , 19(3), pp. 434-455DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12012
Nugent, P. (2011) The Temperance Movement and Wine Farmers at the Cape: Collective Action, Racial Discourse, and Legislative Reform, C. 1890–1965. The Journal of African History, 52(03), pp. 341-363DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853711000508
Nugent, P. (2010) States and Social Contracts in Africa. New Left Review, 63, pp. 35-68
Jockers, H., Kohnert, D. and Nugent, P. (2010) The successful Ghana election of 2008: a convenient myth?. Journal of Modern African Studies, 48(1), pp. 95-115DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X09990231
Nugent, P. (2010) “Nkrumah and Rawlings: political lives in parallel?”. Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana , 12, pp. 35-56
Nugent, P. (2010) Do nations have stomachs? Food drink and imagined community in Africa. Africa Spectrum, 45(3), pp. 87-113
Nugent, P. (2009) “Introduction”. Respacing Africa, pp. 1-9
Nugent, P. (2009) Critical African Studies: a voluntarist manifesto. Critical African Studies, 1
Nugent, P. (2008) “Not so much boom towns as trickle towns: a comparison of two West African border towns, Kpetoe (Ghana) and Darsilami (the Gambia), in Yomi Akinyeye (ed.). That They May Be One: African Boundaries and Regional Integration - Essays in Honour of Professor Anthony I. Asiwaju, pp. 84-105
Nugent, P. (2008) Not so much boom towns as trickle towns: a comparison of two West African border towns, Kpetoe (Ghana) and Darsilami (the Gambia), in Yomi Akinyey. That They May Be One: African Boundaries and Regional Integration - Essays in Honour of Professor Anthony I. Asiwaju, pp. 84-105
Nugent, P. (2008) Putting the history back into ethnicity: enslavement, religion and cultural brokerage on the construction of Mandinka/Jola and Ewe/Agotime identities in West Africa c.1650-1930. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50(4), pp. 920 - 948DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S001041750800039X
Nugent, P. (2007) Cyclical history in the Gambia/Casamance borderlands: Refuge, settlement and Islam from c.1880 to the present. Journal of African History, 48(2), pp. 221-243DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853707002769DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853707002769
Nugent, P. (2007) Migracíon, fronteras y creación del Estado: comparación de los patrones del África Occidentale y del Sur. Nova Africa, 20, pp. 7-26
Nugent, P. (2005) Les elections Ghaneennes de 2004: anatomie d'un system bipartite. Politique Africaine, 97, pp. 133-150
Nugent, P. (2002) Africa. Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 86(1), pp. 167-173DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-3832.2005.00145.x
Nugent, P. (2001) Ethnicity as an Explanatory Factor in the Ghana 2000 elections. Issue, XXIX
Nugent, P. and Meyer, B. (2001) Moral discourses and public spaces in the Fourth Republic. Ghana Studies, 4, pp. 3-5
Nugent, P. (2001) The things that money can buy: chieftaincy, the media and the 1996 elections in the 1996 elections in Hohoe-North constituency. Ghana Studies, 4, pp. 85-106
Nugent, P. (2001) Winners, losers and also rans: money, moral authority and voting patterns in the Ghana 2000 election. African Affairs, 100, pp. 405-428DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/100.400.405
Nugent, P. (1999) Living in the past: Urban, rural and ethnic themes in the 1992 and 1996 elections in Ghana. Journal of Modern African Studies , 37(2), pp. 287-319DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X99003055
Nugent, P. (1996) An abandoned project?: The nuances of chieftaincy, development and history in ghana’s volta region. Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 28(37-38), pp. 203-225DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.1996.10756480
Chapters
Nugent, P. (2021) Making borders, closing frontiers and identifying smuggling: Comparative histories. In: Gallien, M. and Weigand, F. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling. London: Routledge, pp. 95-106DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003043645-7
Nugent, P. (2021) Lomé and Aflao: Ambivalent affinity at the Ghana-Togo border. In: Mikhailova, E. and Garrard, J. (eds.) Twin Cities across Five Continents: Interactions and Tensions on Urban Borders. London: Routledge, pp. 147-158DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003102526-14
Nugent, P. (2019) Symmetry and affinity: Comparing borders and border-making processes in Africa. In: Fassin, D. (ed.) Deepening Divides: How Territorial Borders and Social Boundaries Delineate our World. London: Pluto Press, pp. 233-256
Nugent, P. (2019) Seeing the trees for the wood: The environmental and human consequences of partition in the Senegambian borderlands. In: Zips, W. and Zips-Mairitsch, M. (eds.) Bewildering Borders: The Economy of Conservation in Africa. Lit Verlag, pp. 157-174
Nugent, P. (2019) The remaking of Ghana and Togo at their common border: Alhaji Kalabule meets Nana Benz. In: Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa: The Centrality of the Margins. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 436-483DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139105828.012
Nugent, P. (2018) Border studies: Temporality, space and scale. In: Middell, M. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Transregional Studies. Routledge
Nugent, P. (2018) Africa's re-enchantment with big infrastructure: White elephants dancing in virtuous circles?. In: Schubert, J., Engel, U. and Macamo, E. (eds.) Extractive Industries and Changing State Dynamics in Africa: Beyond the Resource Curse. Abingdon: Routledge
Nugent, P. (2012) Who killed innovation in the Cape wine industry? The story of a stuck fermentation c. 1930-1986. In: Gewald, J., Leliveld, A. and Peša, I. (eds.) Transforming Innovations in Africa: Explorative Studies on Appropriation in African Societies. Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 17-38DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004245440_003
Nugent, P. (2012) Border Towns and Cities in Comparative Perspective. In: A Companion to Border Studies. Blackwell Publishing LtdDOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118255223.ch32
Nugent, P. (2010) The Historicity of Ethnicity: Mandinka/Jola and Ewe/Agotime Identities in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In: Keese, A. (ed.) Ethnicity and the long-term perspective: The African experience. Peter Lang Publishing Group
Nugent, P. (2009) Ghana. In: Mehler, A., Melber, H. and van Walraven, K. (eds.) Africa Yearbook Volume 5: Politics, Economy and Society South of the Sahara in 2008. Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 93-102DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004178113.i-520
Engel, U. and Nugent, P. (2009) Introduction: The spatial turn in African studies. In: Engel, U. and Nugent, P. (eds.) Respacing Africa. Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 1-9DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004178335.i-215.4
Locatelli, F. and Nugent, P. (2009) Introduction. In: Locatelli, F. and Nugent, P. (eds.) African Cities: Competing Claims on Urban Spaces. Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 1-13DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004162648.i-308.5
Nugent, P. (2009) Introduction. In: Locatelli, F. (ed.) African Cities: Competing Claims on Urban Spaces. Brill, pp. 1-14
Nugent, P. (2008) Border anomalies: the role of local actors in shaping spaces along the Senegal-Gambia and Ghana-Togo borders. In: Bellagamba, A. and Klute, G. (eds.) Beside the State: Emergent Powers in Contemporary Africa. Koeppe Verlag, pp. 121-138
Nugent, P. (2007) African Studies in Britain. In: The Oxford Companion to Black British History.
Dorman, S., Nugent, P. and Daniel, H. (2007) Introduction: Citizenship and its Casualties in Africa. In: Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa. Brill, pp. 3-26
Nugent, P. (2006) Banknotes and Symbolic Capital: Ghana's Elections Under the Fourth Republic. In: Mehler, A. (ed.) Votes, Money and Violence: Political Parties and Elections in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nordic Africa Institute
Nugent, P. (2005) A Regional Melting-Pot: The Ewe and their Neighbours in the Ghana-Togo Borderlands. In: Lawrance, B. (ed.) The Ewe of Togo and Benin. Accra Woeli publishers, pp. 29-43
Nugent, P. (2005) Borderland identities in comparative perspective: chieftaincy, religion and belonging along the Ghana-Togo and Senegal-Gambia borders. In: Hernaes, P. (ed.) The Role of Tradition and Modernity in African Political Cultures and Urban Conflicts: the Case of Ghana in Comparative Perspective. Trondheim University of Science and Technology, pp. 9-34
Nugent, P. (2005) Ghana. In: Mehler, A., Melber, H. and Walraven, K. (eds.) Africa Yearbook: Politics, Economy and Society South of the Sahara. Brill, pp. 77-87
Nugent, P. (2004) Ghana-Togo. In: Calvert, P. (ed.) Border and Territorial Disputes of the World. John Harper Publishing, pp. 31-36