Team > Dr. Biruk Terrefe

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Sociology

Biruk Terrefe is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bayreuth and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s African Studies Centre. His interdisciplinary work lies at the intersection of political science, development studies, and geography, with a focus on how infrastructure projects and urban spaces relate to the politics of statecraft in Africa. His research currently spans two main areas of interest. 

The first area investigates the relationship between infrastructure and state-building, particularly how large energy, transport, and logistics systems have shaped (and are shaped by) political orders and overlapping sovereignties, especially in the Horn of Africa. In his recent project on a Chinese-financed railway in Ethiopia, he examined the tensions between an authoritarian developmental agenda and the state's ethnically federated governance structure. Infrastructures are highly contested material spaces of negotiating the nature of the state across different administrative scales and geographic space. 

His second area of research focuses on Africa’s urban turn and the political and social struggles that arise in cities, their peripheries, and hinterlands during rapid urban redevelopment. Ambitious plans to design world-class cities often lead to the creation of exclusive enclaves, the fracturing of the urban social fabric, and the exacerbation of inequalities. His recent work on Addis Ababa highlights how elite-driven megaprojects and grand urban schemes have intensified conflicts over spatial justice and access to resource amid widespread rural-to-urban migration. By examining the tensions between urban planners, political elites, and marginalized social groups, his research delves into the ideological drivers and broader poltical implications of these urban transformations. 

Commentary, interviews, and references to Biruk Terrefe’s work have appeared in The Economist, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, France24, The Conversation, Schweizer Radio & Fernsehen (SRF). Prior to Bayreuth, Biruk Terrefe was a Departmental Lecturer in African Politics at the University of Oxford. He holds a PhD and a Master’s degree from Oxford’s Department of International Development, a BA from Bremen and spent a semester at Science Po Paris. Beyond academia, Biruk was a Carlo-Schmid Fellow at the World Health Organisation in Copenhagen, and he frequently provides analysis and research insights to international organizations and non-governmental bodies.

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Sociology

• State-building and development
• Politics of Infrastructure
• Cities & Africa’s Urban Futures
• State-Society Relations
• History and Politics of the Horn of Africa
• Federalism & Local Government

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Sociology

Publications

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Sociology

Dr. Biruk Terrefe
Post-Doc, Research Associate

E-mail: biruk.terrefe@uni-bayreuth.de

Office hours: appointment by e-mail.