Dr. Tim Zajontz
© Tim Zajontz
Research Associate
NameDr. Tim Zajontz
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Tim Zajontz is a lecturer at the Chair of Political Science with a focus on International Politics since April 2023. Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh (UK) and taught at the University of Freiburg, the University of St Andrews (UK) and at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). He holds a PhD from the School of International Relations at St Andrews where he worked under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Dr. Ian Taylor on the political economy and governance of Chinese-financed infrastructure projects in Africa. His PhD research was funded by the German Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Zajontz is also an honorary research fellow in the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch University, a co-coordinator of the Collaborative Research Group 'African Politics and International Relations' of the Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS) and a research associate in the Second Cold War Observatory. He has previously worked in different advisory positions in German and EU politics. He is co-founder of the Germany-based, not-for-profit organisation ‘Freundeskreis Uganda e.V.’
His research centres around Africa’s international relations and political economy, with a particular focus on Southern and Eastern Africa as well as on Africa-China relations. His current research interests are intensifying geopolitics and geoeconomics across the ‘Global South’ and the political economy of competing connectivity initiatives, notably China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the EU’s Global Gateway and the US-led Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII). He is also interested in dynamics of indebtedness and dependency, in regionalisms and regional integration, economic imperialisms, late neoliberalism and the production of space in international relations. Tim Zajontz has conducted research in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as with the EU.
His research appeared in Journals such as Global Political Economy, South African Journal of Political Studies, South African Journal of International Affairs, Chinese Political Science Review, Journal of Modern African Studies, Review of African Political Economy, Canadian Journal of African Studies, and Oxford Development Studies
Table of contents
Selected Publications
Journals
Chiyemura, Frangton, Elisa Gambino and Tim Zajontz 2023. ‘Infrastructure and the politics of African state agency: shaping the Belt and Road Initiative in East Africa’, Chinese Political Science Review 8: 105–131.
Carmody, Pádraig, Tim Zajontz and Ricardo Reboredo 2022. ‘From “debt diplomacy” to donorship? China’s changing role in global development’, Global Political Economy 1(2): 198–217.
Zajontz, Tim 2022. ‘Seamless imaginaries, territorialized realities: the regional politics of corridor governance in Southern Africa’, Territory, Politics, Governance, online first.
Zajontz, Tim 2022. ‘“Win-win” contested: negotiating the privatisation of Africa’s Freedom Railway with the “Chinese of today”’, Journal of Modern African Studies 60(1): 111-134.
Zajontz, Tim 2022. ‘Debt, distress, dispossession: towards a critical political economy of Africa’s financial dependency’, Review of African Political Economy 49(171): 173-183.
Carmody, Pádraig, Ian Taylor and Tim Zajontz 2022. ‘China’s Spatial Fix and “Debt Diplomacy” in Africa: Constraining Belt or Road to Economic Transformation?’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 56(1): 57-77.
Zajontz, Tim 2022. ‘The Chinese infrastructural fix in Africa: Lessons from the Sino-Zambian “road bonanza”’, Oxford Development Studies 50(1): 14-29.
Taylor, Ian and Tim Zajontz 2020. ‘In a fix: Africa’s place in the Belt and Road Initiative and the reproduction of dependency’, South African Journal of International Affairs 2020, 27(3): 277-295.
Zajontz, Tim and Anthony Leysens 2015. ‘Regionalism Revised: A Critical-reflectivist Framework for Engaging the Changing Nature of Developing Regionalisms in Africa’, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 2015, 42(3): 299-323.
Zajontz, Tim and Anthony Leysens 2015. ‘Civil Society in Southern Africa – Transformers from Below?’, Journal of Southern African Studies 2015, 41(4): 887-904.
Books
Zajontz, Tim, Pádraig Carmody, Mandira Bagwandeen and Anthony Leysens 2023 (forthcoming). Africa’s Railway Renaissance: The role and impact of China. Abingdon: Routledge.
Edited Volumes
Zajontz, Tim (forthcoming). ‘The political economy of China’s globalising railways – and their arrival in Africa’, in Zajontz, T., Carmody, P, Bagwandeen, M. and Leysens, A. (eds.) Africa’s Railway Renaissance: The role and impact of China. Abingdon: Routledge.
Zajontz, Tim (forthcoming). ‘Chinese globalism, African regionalisms and state spatial strategies: The intricacies of regionalising Africa’s railway renaissance’, in Zajontz, T., Carmody, P., Bagwandeen, M. and Leysens, A. (eds.) Africa’s Railway Renaissance: The role and impact of China. Abingdon: Routledge.
Zajontz, Tim, Pádraig Carmody, Mandira Bagwandeen and Anthony Leysens (forthcoming). ‘Introduction: China’s role in Africa’s railway renaissance’, in Zajontz, T., Carmody, P, Bagwandeen, M. and Leysens, A. (eds.) Africa’s Railway Renaissance: The role and impact of China. Abingdon: Routledge.
Zajontz, Tim 2022 . ‘Infrastructure’, in Engel, Ulf (ed.) Yearbook on the African Union. Volume 2. Leiden: Brill.
Zajontz, Tim 2022. ‘Railway imperialisms in East Africa: Laying the tracks for exploitation’, in Cope, Zak and Ness, Immanuel (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zajontz, Tim 2021. ‘Infrastructure’, in Engel, Ulf (ed.) Yearbook on the African Union. Volume 1. Leiden: Brill.
Zajontz, Tim and Ian Taylor 2021. ‘Capitalism and Africa’s (Infra)Structural Dependency: A Story of Spatial Fixes and Accumulation by Dispossession‘, in Oritsejafor, E.O. and Cooper, A.D. (eds.) Africa and the Global System of Capital Accumulation. Routledge.
For a comprehensive list of publications, please follow this link.
Media Work
For a list of interviews and media commentary, please follow this link.
For media inquiries, please email.
Research Interests
- African international relations, politics and political economy
- Africa-China and Africa-EU relations
- Economic governance and state-society relations
- Regionalisms and regional integration
- Neo-Marxian, neo-Gramscian and postcolonial approaches
- Critical realist philosophy of science
Teaching
| 2023 |
M.A. Seminar "Complex Actor Constellations and Horizontal Cooperation in the Transnational Realm", summer term 2023, Department of Political Science, Technische Universität Dresden M.A. Seminar "Theories of International Organisations", summer term 2023, Department of Policial Science, Technische Universität Dresden |
| 2022 |
Advanced reminar "The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa", summer term 2022, Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg B.A. Seminar "Foundations of International Relations and Global Politics", summer term 2022, Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg |
| 2021 |
Advanced course "Global Political Economy and the Global South", winter term 2021, Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg Exercise course accompanying the lecture ‘Introduction to Political Science’., winter term 2021, Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg |
| 2020 | Honours (4th year) module: The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa", winter term 2020, School of International Relations, University of St Andrews |
| 2019 | Honours (4th year) module: The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa, first term, School of International Relations, University of St Andrews |
| 2016 | Senior honours (4th year) module: Global Political Economy, second term, Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University |
| 2015 | Senior honours (4th year) module: Global Political Economy, second term, Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University |
| 2014 | Senior honours (4th year) module: Global Political Economy, second term, Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University |