Professor Rita Abrahamsen

Rita Abrahamsen joined the African Studies Centre in January 2026 as the Professor of African Studies. An interdisciplinary scholar, her research explores Africa’s position in the changing world order, focusing on the intersections of the global and the local, crossing the conventional boundaries of African Politics, International Relations, and Security Studies.

Her current research examines the impact of contemporary radical conservative movements on international politics and foreign policy. Her most recent book is the co-authored World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order (Cambridge University Press 2024), which explores the theoretical foundations and global interconnectedness of the radical right. She is writing a book about the Afrikaner minority and the geopolitical imaginary of the transnational radical right. Professor Abrahamsen is also interested in theorizing global order at a macro level, a theme explored in her forthcoming co-authored book Developing Hegemony: World Order and the Transnational Field of Development, which will be published by Stanford University Press in June 2026.

Her previous books include Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics (2011), co-authored with Michael C. Williams, and Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa (2000), as well as the edited volumes Conflict and Security in Africa (2013) and, with Anna Leander, The Routledge Handbook of Private Security Studies (2016). She is also a former editor of African Affairs.

Prior to coming to Oxford, Rita was Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa in Canda, where she was also the Director of the Center for International Policy Studies. She is the Nelson Madela Visiting Professor 2025-26 at Rhodes University and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Comparative and International Politics at Stellenbosch University, both in South Africa.

For more information, see her personal website ritaabrahamsen.com.