Davide Chinigò is a Senior Assistant Professor in African Studies at the University of Bologna. His current projects investigate the history and politics of state and nation-building in Ethiopia, as well as South Africa-Europe collaborations in space science and astronomy. He has been affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology since 2016. Between 2016 and 2019, he served as a postdoctoral research fellow for the SARChI Research Chair in the “Sociology of Land, Environment, and Sustainable Development.” Davide has been a Research Fellow in the department ever since. His research in South Africa focuses on the scalar politics of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a major global investment in astronomy, with a large portion of the infrastructure located in the Northern Cape.

Davide other main research interest is the history and politics of state and nation-building in Ethiopia, where he has conducted work since 2006. From a methodological perspective, Davide prioritizes an approach that integrates archival research with sociological and ethnographic analysis of specific case studies.

Since 2023, Davide have been the Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge University Press).

Selected publications:

Chinigò, D. (2022), Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia. Power, Scale, Performativity. Oxford University Press, Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations series.

Chinigò, D. (2021) (ed.), ‘Continuity and Rupture in Ethiopia under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front’, Special Issue of Afriche e Orienti, n. 2/2020.

Walker, C., D. Chinigò, S. Dubow (2019) (eds.), ‘Karoo Futures: Astronomy in Place and Space’, Special Issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies, 45 (4).

Chinigò, D., C. Walker (2020) ‘Science, astronomy and sacrifice zones: Development trade-offs and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project in South Africa’, Social Dynamics 46(3): 391-413.