Laurent Fourchard

Laurent Fourchard is a French historian and political scientist at the National Foundation for Political Science (FNSP)'s Centre for International Relations (CERI) and at the Urban School of Sciences Po Paris, where he is a research professor. His research and publications explore the themes of crime and violence, security and vigilantism, urbanism and governance of metropolises, urban transport and transport unionism, political sociology of Nigeria and South Africa, and the history and historiography of contemporary Africa. In June 2023, Fourchard won the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Lagos Studies Association.

Education Fourchard obtained a Master of Philosophy in history at University of Paris 7 (now Paris Diderot University) in 1995. He earned his doctorate degree in African history at the same university in 2000 under the supervision of Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch.

Career Upon completing his PhD., Fourchard was appointed as Director of the French Institute for Research in Africa in Nigeria (IFRA-Nigeria), in the University of Ibadan, from 2000 to 2003. Before joining CERI in 2016, he was a research fellow at the Les Afriques dans le monde research institute at Sciences Po Bordeaux. In 2008 and 2009 he was visiting scholar at the University of Cape Town, Nuffield College, University of Oxford (2010, 2023), University of Turin (2020), and Columbia University (2022).

Fourchard has authored 3 monographs, and well over 50 journals articles and book chapters in English and French languages. His most recent book is Classify, Exclude, Police: Urban Lives in South Africa and Nigeria, which was released in 2021 as the English version of his French monograph, Trier, exclure et policer: Vies urbaines en Afrique du Sud et au Nigeria which was released in 2018.

Fourchard combines the methodologies of history and ethnography to deliver compelling comparative analyses of the urban politics of social categorization and policing in Nigerian and South African cities.

At different points in his career, Fourchard has edited or been on the editorial boards of the following high-impact journals: Africa, Journal of African History, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and Politique africaine.

Selected publications