Interested in Africa? Come talk to our new professor, Amanda Robinson.  She has done an extensive amount of research in sub-Saharan Africa and is passionate about helping students connect with projects there. Professor Robinson didn’t expect to find herself in Africa, she began her career interested in psychology.

Growing up in North East Alabama, she was influenced by her experiences with race relations and was interested in watching how groups that were different would find a way to connect with each other.  She went to Appalachian State University and studied human biology and psychology to learn more about inter-group connections.  After her undergrad experience, she started on the path to get her PhD in psychology so she spent a few years in Rochester doing lab work as a research lab coordinator in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at the University of Rochester.  During her time in New York, she started taking political science courses and realized how much she enjoyed tackling the concepts of group relations and conflict from a political perspective.

The deciding difference between political science and psychology for her was that in psychology, researchers often focus more on universal human psychology, with less emphasis on the importance of political and cultural contexts.  Whereas in political science she was drawn to the way that she could use context in evaluating issues and was excited about the prospect of doing field work. Professor Robinson then decided to switched courses and complete her PhD in Political Science instead.  She did just that, graduating from Stanford University in June of 2013.

She was drawn to study in Africa because in many of the countries the state came first through colonialism so she was interested to see how people grew attachment to the state and if it helped with ethnic conflict. Throughout her research she lived in Liberia, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Kenya and Tanzania.  One of the things that surprised her most about living in Africa was how different many of the places were from what is projected in the media and the images we often associate with that part of the world.  She said that although there is suffering, many people are living lives similar to our own.  Professor Robinson felt the people she met while conducting research taught her a lot about how to live a better life through creating a community with the people around us and talking more to our neighbors.  

Professor Robinson’s research focuses on studying nationalism and how people identify themselves with the state and her dissertation studied the impact of nationalism on intergroup trust in Malawi.  This year she is teaching a course on African politics that will discuss politics in the African context and show how there are actually many similarities between African countries politics and other nations. In the spring, she will be teaching a course on Ethnic conflict that will discuss where social identities come from and the impact of these identities in group relationships and ultimately, conflict. She is excited to work with the students here at OSU because she is hoping that she can bring topics to them that will be new and challenging.

Please join us in welcoming Professor Robinson to the department!