by Leonard Wantchekon

by Yiming Liu and Jana Friedrichsen

The Working Group on African Political Economy (WGAPE), founded in 2002, is a network of researchers with deep field research experience that meets regularly to provide structured feedback on in-progress research papers related to the theme of African political economy.

The Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) brings together faculty and advanced graduate students in economics, political science, and other social science disciplines, with a combined focus on field-based research and political economy methods. The workshop involves in-depth discussions of papers and research designs that are circulated and read in advance, and is ideally suited for feedback on work-in-progress.

Organizers: Ana Garcia-Hernandez, Alexandra Scacco, Michael Seese

This workshop focuses on the upcoming Horizon 2020 call, “Addressing the challenge of migrant integration through ICT-enabled solutions.” Potential partners from European institutions and a select set of US-based experts in the fields of intergroup contact and migrant integration will gather to address this challenging call.  The workshop’s H20

Policies focused on the integration of migrants and refugees are often driven by conventional wisdoms and fear, and there are persistent concerns that integration policies are failing both host communities and migrants in Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. In this context, the research unit Institutions and Political Inequality will host a two-day workshop to bring together practitioners in government, decision-makers from international and non-governmental organizations, and leading researchers in this field.

The Political Economy of Development research area will host a 2-day workshop with a focus on how to conceptualize and measure across countries the multiple dimensions of political inequality between individuals and societal groups. One goal of the workshop is to contribute to the debate surrounding the measurement process for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG #16.7 ("Ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels").

The Political Economy of Development research area will host a joint WZB-Columbia University workshop to present and discuss ongoing research, completed research, and research designs. Presentations by members of the Institutions and Political Inequality research unit and doctoral students at Columbia will include work on gender empowerment in Uganda, bureaucratic organization in Sierra Leone, gender-based violence in Congo, community policing in Papua New Guinea. The workshop takes the form of small group focused discussions on research and will generally not include presentations.

The WZB is pleased to support the annual graduate student conference of the Berlin Development Economics Network. This daylong event features presentations of new work on a range of topics including inequality, political voice, migration and remittances as well as a presentation on research transparency in social science.

For more information about the workshop please visit  https://sites.google.com/site/berlindevnetwork/workshop2015