Dr. Samson Bezabeh
Assistant Professor

Email: sbezabeh@hku.hk

Samson A. Bezabeh, received his PhD from University of Bergen in 2013. Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong, he was a Research Fellow at Makerere University in Uganda, Post-Doctoral researcher at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, visiting fellow the Africa-Studiecentrum in Leiden, The Netherlands and has been affiliated with the University of Bergen, the University of Exeter, and Addis Ababa University.

• Research Interest

Bezabeh’s research interests include diaspora studies, religion and media, religion and the state, as well as issues of citizenship, ethnicity, and class in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Djibouti and Ethiopia, and the southern Arabian Peninsula.

• Selected Publications

2017. ‘Africa’s Unholy Migrants: Mobility and Migrants Morality in the Age of Borders’, African Affairs , Vol. 116, Issue 462, 1-17.

2017. “Arab Diaspora in Geopolitical Spaces: Imperial Contestation and the Making of Colonial Subjecthood in Djibouti”, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, LVII, 225, 17-38.

2017. ‘Djibouti’ , In Kate Fleet , Gudrun Kramer et.al (eds) The Encyclopedia of Islam, Third Edition. Leiden/Boston : Brill.

2016. Subjects of Empires/Citizens of State: Yemenis in the Port of Djibouti and its Hinterland. (Cairo/ New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2016).

2015. “Living Across Digital Landscapes: Muslims, Orthodox and Indian Guru in Urban Ethiopia”. In Rosalind Hackett and Benjamin Soares (eds.) New Media and Religion in Africa. Indiana University Press.

2012.“Mythical Roots, Fantasmic Realities and Transnational Migrants : Yemenis Across the Gulf of Aden”. Cyber Orient, Vol. 6, Issue 2.

2011. Citizenship and the Logic of Sovereignty in Djibouti. African Affairs, 110/441, 587-606.

2011. “Yemeni Families in the Early History of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia ca.1900-1950: A Revisionist Approach in Diasporic Historiography”. Cahiers d’Études Africaines, LI (4) No.204, pp. 893-919.

2010. Muslim Hadramis in “Christian Ethiopia”. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 30, No.3, pp. 333-343.