Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) January 2016

The Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) brings together faculty and advanced graduate students in Economics and Political Science who combine field research experience in Africa with training in political economy methods. It is co-led by Daniel Posner (Department of Political Science, UCLA), Edward Miguel (Department of Economics, UC Berkeley), and Brian Dillon (Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington).  We are collaborating with partners at NYU — Abu Dhabi, J. Andrew Harris and Peter van der Windt to host a special WGAPE meeting with a research discussions component and training module. We look forward to inviting a larger group of African scholars who can benefit from these meeting objectives. Thanks to NYU-AD, WGAPE will be able to provide funding for travel, accommodation, and related expenses to accepted WGAPE participants.

WGAPE meetings are held in four regional sub-groups each fall and in a national meeting each spring. This call for papers is for a special, supplementary WGAPE meeting, which will be held January 6-9, 2016 at New York University – Abu Dhabi.

The meeting will begin on Wednesday, January 6, and end on Saturday, January 9, 2016. This meeting will expand upon the WGAPE model to include both research discussion sessions on papers in progress, as in previous years (see an archive of papers from past WGAPE meetings), and a short training workshop to expose African/developing country scholars to the newest tools and approaches to conducting rigorous research on political economy of Africa.

1. Our research discussion sessions are built around in-depth discussions of papers that are circulated and expected to be read in advance. Presenters provide little more than a few brief, orienting comments before the floor is opened for discussion. WGAPE is more a forum for presenting work in progress than polished, finished projects and provides an unparalleled opportunity for useful feedback.
2. Our short training workshop component will provide African/developing country scholars a chance to learn experimental methods in studying topics relevant to political economy of Africa, best research practices, and resource module to guide scholars to data sources, training materials, and networking fora.

Dan Posner (UC Los Angeles), Brian Dillon, J. Andrew Harris, Peter van der Windt