Assistant Professor at Ashesi, Lloyd Amoah, was named a 2013 Postdoctoral Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. The fellowship aims to attract researchers whose work is informed by current theoretical debates in the social sciences and humanities over global connectivity, and who are able to critically engage with shifting ideas in “area studies” beyond the ways in which these have traditionally been regarded in the West. Lloyd becomes the first African professor to be awarded the fellowship.
As a fellow, Lloyd spent three months in Leiden working on his research and participating in seminars that looked at contemporary Africa-Asia relations. He also attended the 8th Conference of the International Convention of Asia Scholars(ICAS) which took place in Macau, China. He also presented two papers on the ways in which China constructs her soft power in Africa via architecture and construction, and the Chinese presence in small-scale mining in Ghana.
“My presence in Leiden and the IIAS has some serendipity about it,” says Lloyd. “I was originally planning to do my fellowship at the African Studies Center, which is just a spitting distance from the IIAS. A roundtable at an idyllic game resort in Lusuka (Zambia), which led to the setting up of the Association of Asian Studies in Africa (A-ASIA), changed my research fellowship trajectory. In Lusaka I met Philippe Peycam, the energetic director of IIAS, and was convinced the IIAS was custom tooled for the demands of my specific research interest.”
“My considered view is that at this key juncture in Africa’s history, in which the makings of a multi-polar world is in palpable evidence, it is crucial that some critical light is shed on the underlying reasons (beyond the stylized narratives) and forms (especially institutional) by which the emerging powers Brazil, China and India are interacting with Africa and Africa’s role in shaping such interactions – and what all this portends for the future of the world.”
Lloyd’s research has focused on public policy formation and development in developing societies, Africa-BRICS relations and public administration and philosophy. His work has appeared in Administrative Theory and Praxis Journal, Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Journal of African Affairs and the Ghana Policy Journal among others. He has also published on Africa-China relations in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Focus on Africa magazine, Jeune Afrique’s The Africa Report, Third World Network’s African Agenda magazine and other local and international publications. Lloyd is currently working on a book (due for publication in 2014), which analyzes the emergence and impacts of the knowledge society/economy on contemporary Africa’s socio-economic development.