Titilope Ajayi is a PhD Candidate at the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy (LECIAD), University of Ghana. A feminist researcher and writer on security and civil society, she has held appointments as head of research at the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) and fellow/West Africa analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICS). Ajayi founded and coordinates Doing A PhD in Africa (www.doingaphdinafrica.org) and also works as an independent copyeditor. She was a Next Gen Dissertation Proposal Fellow (2017) and an African Peacebuilding Network Individual Grant recipient (2018).
Her latest publications include:
The Postponement of Nigeria’s 2019 Elections: Is Democracy on Hold? Kujenga Amani, 22 February 2019.
(2018) Peppering Patriarchy: Re-imagining/Re-making Femaleness in Ghana through Social Media, The CIHA Blog, Conference Paper presented at the African Studies Association annual meeting, Chicago, 15–19 November 2017.
Award Information
Contemporary social movements are operating in complex spaces, physical and digital, owing to a palpable disconnect between narratives and expectations of democratic peace, and the increasing militarization of states and security institutions. Aggressive responses, particularly by police, stand in stark contrast to largely peaceful civilian demands for accountability which, even at their most ferocious, cannot match the brute force of militarized state security machinery. The creation of alternative spaces for mobilization online shields activisms from aggressive physical security responses but is giving way to different kinds of control that are no less forceful. By comparing two prominent ongoing, internationalized activisms against violence respectively by terrorists and states, 'Bring Back Our Girls', and 'Black Lives Matter', I aim to observe the workings of present-day politics of resistance/contention by looking at how both are navigating militarized public spaces and the interactions among the multiple, intersectional invisibilities occasioned by their existence.