Jana Hönke is a professor and leads the chair for Sociology in Africa at the University of Bayreuth. She directs the DFG project Crafting the space to govern: Non-state practices of legitimation in Africa, and is a principle investigator in the Cluster of Excellency Africa Multiple, the Postcolonial Hierarchies in Peace and Conflict research network and the research network Conflicts.Meanings.Transitions. From 2018-25 she led the ERC INFRAGLOB project Africa's Infrastructure Globalities. Her research interests include transnational security, politics of infrastructure and extraction, non-state actors in transnational politics (MNCs, NGOs, transnational professionals), South-South relations and China-Africa, contentious politics, and practice theories. A core question across projects is how governance practices are transnationally constituted and contested, how they change, and to what effect. While doing multi-sited fieldwork including in Europe, China and Brazil, much of her work has taken place in Sub-Saharan Africa with research conducted in South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique and Guinea.

Prof. Hönke is also Director of the Conflict, Crisis, and Change (C³) Research Center at the University of Bayreuth, Board Member of the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF) and Member of the Academic Council of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy Hamburg (IFSH). Previously, she was also Deputy Speaker of the Bavarian Scientific Alliance for Peace, Conflict, and Security Research (FoKS).

She is the author of ‘Transnational Business and Security Governance. Hybrid Practices in a Postcolonial World’ (2013), ‘The Global Making of Policing. Postcolonial Perspectives’ (with Mueller, 2016), and 'Africa's Global Infrastructures. South-South Transformation in Practice' (with Cezne, Yang, 2023). Her articles have appeared in leading journals such as International Political Sociology, Security Dialogue, African Affairs, Governance, World Development, Global Sociology and Environment and Planning D. She is also a co-editor of the Spaces of Peace, Security and Development book series at Bristol University Press and serves on the boards of International Political Sociology, European Journal of International Relations and Security Dialogue.

Previously, she was an Associate Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow in International Relations at the University of Groningen. Prior to that she worked as a lecturer in International Relations at the Politics and International Relations Department, University of Edinburgh, and as a researcher at the SFB 700 Research Centre Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood, Freie Universität Berlin. She has been an interim professor at the Centre of Conflict Studies, Philipps-Universität Marburg 2015/16, and held visiting fellowships at the Centre for International Policy Studies and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, the Centre of Criminology, University of Cape Town and the Sociology of Work Unit, University of Witwatersrand. She holds a Magister (MA) in African Studies, Political Science and Economics (University of Leipzig), and a PhD in Political Science from Freie Universität Berlin.

• State Governance
• International Relations
• (In-)Security
• Non-state actors

Building: GW II Room: 00.15

Office hours (Tuesdays, 3-4 pm): make an appointment

Phone: +49 (0)921/55-4137
E-Mail: jana.hoenke@uni-bayreuth.de