Karen Büscher
Karen Büscher's research approaches violent conflict from a spatial material perspective, investigating the transformative power of violent conflict in terms of spatial dynamics. From a dominant political anthropological perspective, her approach sits at the intersection of conflict studies, urban studies and political geography. Her main area of specialisation is Central Africa and more specifically the violent conflict in Easter DRC.
Karen Büscher's areas of interest evolve around war and rural-urban mobility, violent landscapes, humanitarian urbanism, urban governance, militarized urbanity, social geographies of violent conflict, settlement in displacement.
New Publication:Land Under Siege: Militarized Capitalism and Urban Land Dispossession in the City of Goma, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
This article investigates the relationship between militarization and land grabbing in the context of rapid urbanization and protracted violent conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Call for Papers: Voices, Rights, Justice in Africa
Ghent Africa Platform Symposium International Conference
Tuesday 8 December 2026 at De Krook in Ghent, Belgium
Closing Workshop: The Politics of Hidden Urbanisation amidst conflict and forced displacement in the DRC
Date: March 26, 2026 ( Thu)
Time: 10:00- 16:00 CET
Venue: Rm. 301, 3rd Floor, Technicum 1 Bldg., UFO Campus, Ghent University
New Vacancy: PhD position on ‘transnational urban warscapes’
4-year fully funded PhD opportunity
Public Lecture: Sub-imperial Power in Arabia: The Gulf Arab States and their Precarious Regional Role in Sudan and Beyond By Isa Blum
When:December 11, 4:30-6 PM
Where: Auditorium 4 'Jaap Kruithof' Campus Boekentoren, Blandijnberg 2.
CALL FOR APPLICATION: CRG Fully Funded Ph.D. Position
CRG offers a fully funded PhD position on the theme of ‘Rural Radicalism’.
Deadline: August 15, 2025
CRG Book Launch: Dawn Rose on a Dead Body: Armed Violence and Poppy Farming in Mexico
Who are the poppy farmers, caught between military repression and exploitation by those who buy their crops? What does it mean to be a woman in a place where men’s violence looms?
New Publication: Mineralised Urbanisation: Rural-Urban Linkages, Migration and Mobility, and the Making and Unmaking of Cities in Africa
The chapter describes how mining towns in Southern Africa are strongly characterised by rural-urban linkages and mobilities.
EVENT: Film and Contentious Politics in Senegal
Seminar and Screening of Baanum Nafi ( Nafi's Father)
by Professor and Filmmaker Mamadou Dia
Vacancy: Two sandwich PhD Scholarships
We offer 2 PhD sandwich scholarships in partnership with a university from the Global South.
Current research projects:
Mining ecology, early urbanism and environmental knowledge in Katanga: a deep-time interdisciplinary approach
Through an interdisciplinary approach involving political anthropology, oral history, environmental archaeology and historical linguistics, this project aspires to transform our understanding of the deep-time interactions between artisanal mining ecology, early urbanism, and indigenous ecological knowledge in the southeastern DRC.
The politics of Hidden Urbanisation in the D.R. Congo
This project sets out to investigate ‘hidden’ forms of urbanity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in order to achieve a better understanding of the profoundly political character of rapid urbanisation in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Social resilience after sexual violence in Eastern DR Congo: from decay over reparations to accountable governance
Eastern DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) has known over three decades of war and violence in which the population in general and women in particular became victimized in a situation of state and societal decay.
Changing urban residency: Migration, temporary settlement and new urbanisms in Africa
This research project is focused on temporary migration and settlement in Angola, DRC and Zimbabwe and how, in specific cases, they both extend in time and become permanent, creating unforeseen new urbanisms.
Research Projects under Supervision:
Rural Radicalism
Analyzing conflict mobilities from Uganda’s Nakivale Refugee Settlement
Understanding urban protest in a context of war: an ethnographic analysis of ‘urban political terrains’ in eastern DRC
Border as “Opportunity”: Informal Cattle Trade across the Bangladesh-India Borders
The Dynamics of Urbanisation and Ethnic Contestations in Peri-urban Areas of Ethiopia: Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa cities in Focus