Samuel Anim

Teaching Fellow in African Politics

Email: Samuel.k.anim@warwick.ac.uk

Office: Social Sciences Building, E1.15

Advice and Feedback hours:

Mondays 4:30 - 5:30 pm

Tuesdays 1:30 - 3:30 pm

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Subject to availability, advice/feedback sessions can be arranged outside specified times.

 

I am currently a Teaching Fellow in African Politics. I completed my PhD in Politics and International Studies at PAIS, Warwick in 2024, with funding from the University’s Chancellor’s International Scholarship. I hold an MSc in African Studies (awarded with Distinction) from St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, where I concentrated on African politics, history, and development. Before that, I obtained a BA in Political Studies from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana.

Research

My broader research explores the manifold ways in which democracies are established, maintained, and transformed in different political contexts. I am also interested in the dynamics of social conflicts and peacebuilding. My PhD research merged these interests to examine the politics, processes, and outcomes of stabilising Ghana’s hyper-competitive electoral democracy to uncover the conditions under which local agency, local cultures, and ideas can permeate and shape political transitions. This work was supervised by Professors Gabrielle Lynch and Briony Jones. I am currently preparing a book manuscript and other publications from this research.

Additionally, I have written about how political parties organise to ensure credible elections and function as drivers of democratic quality in settings of low institutional trust. I am also interested in broader trends shaping global democracy and innovative strategies that can be taken to address the poly-crises facing liberal political systems.

Teaching

For the 2025/26 academic year, I am the module director and seminar tutor for PO2D1: The Politics of Eastern Africa and PO390: Violence and Reconciliation in Eastern Africa. Previously, I have been a seminar tutor for PO107: Introduction to Politics in PAIS from 2021/22 to 2023/24. Beyond Warwick, I have worked in teaching and research roles at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

I am keen on supervising undergraduate and master’s dissertations on a range of comparative and African politics themes, especially political parties, democratic institutions, electoral and political violence, social development, among others.

Publications

• ‘Strategizing for Quality Elections in Africa: Party Capacity and the Politics of Vigilance in Ghana’ African Affairs (online version)

• ‘Jacob Zuma’s Enduring Relevance’, Africa is a Country, 28 January 2025

• ‘Botswana’s Misunderstood “Miracle”’, Journal of Democracy, 13 January 2025

• ‘The Moral Challenges of Ghana’s New Force Movement’, Democracy in Africa, 14 May 2024

• ‘The Entitlement of Bola Tinubu’, Africa is a Country, 12 August 2022

• ‘Four Things to Look Out for in Ghana’s New Government’, Democracy in Africa, 8 April 2021