James Christopher Mizes
Ph.D Student - City & Regional Planning
- Research Interests/Specializations
Municipal finance, public infrastructure, urban street markets, governing/governance, decentralization, fiscal autonomy, liberal administration, global development, urban and planning theory, value, publics, territory, risk, West Africa, ethnography.
- Degrees
- PhD City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley
- M.A. Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University
- B.A. Political Science, Webster University
- Biography
I am a scholar of urban planning, politics, and policy, and I conduct ethnographic research on infrastructural and financial politics in West African cities. My research makes a conceptual contribution to the social scientific scholarship on sovereignty, government, and expertise at the urban (and continental) scale.
I recently finished my PhD at DCRP and am now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Sciences Sociales (IRISSO) at the Université Paris-Dauphine, Paris Sciences et Lettres. This research is titled "Continental Planning: Pan-Africanism and the Infrastructures of High Finance". It is funded by the Institut Francilien Recherche Innovation Société (IFRIS), a program in the field of science and technology studies.
I am also currently working on my book manuscript, tentatively titled "Communal Autonomy: The Politics of Public Finance in a Democratic Dakar", and have a couple articles on this topic in the pipeline as well. In this research, I analyse the emergence of municipal authority in Senegal, and the political disputes surrounding the transformation of this authority today. I develop theoretical insights from science and technology studies and postcolonial studies to reconsider how planners and social scientists have hereto understood municipal government and the re-scaling of statehood in and beyond urban Africa.
- Courses Taught
CP 200 History of City Planning (with Stephen Collier)
GMS 200 Global Metropolitan Studies: Introduction to Theories, Histories, & Methods (with Joan Walker)
DS 100 History & Theory of Development (with Gillian Hart)
Environmental Policies (taught at Temple University)
Global Cities (taught at Temple University)
Coping with the Vacant City (designed and taught at Temple University)
- Awards + Recognition
- 2017-2018 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (Cultural Anthropology)
- 2017-2018 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
- 2017 Fulbright-Hays, United States Department of Education Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship
- 2016 Institute of International Studies at UC, Berkeley. John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellowship in International and Comparative Studies
- 2015 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. Nominated by the Department of International and Area Studies for the course “History of Development and Underdevelopment” with Gillian Hart
- 2015 Social Science Research Council’s Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship
- 2015 West African Research Association Pre-Dissertation Fellowship for summer research
- 2013 Chancellor’s Multi-Year Fellowship from UC Berkeley Graduate Division
- Selected Publications
Cirolia, L.R. & Mizes, J.C. (2019) Property tax in African secondary cities: Insights from the cases of Kisumu (Kenya) and M’Bour (Senegal). International Center for Tax and Development Working Paper 90. Access at link.
Mizes, J.C & Cirolia, L.R. (2018) Contournements: Fiscalité et exceptions informelles dans les villes de M'Bour et de Kisumu. Politique Africaine. Special Issue: Fiscalité en Afrique contemporaine : Formalités et informalités. English version available online.
Mizes, J.C. (2016) Who Owns Africa’s Infrastructure? Limn Issue Number Seven: Public Infrastructure/Infrastructural Publics. Access at link.
Collier, S. J, Mizes, J. C, Von Schnitzler, A. (2016) Preface: Public Infrastructure/Infrastructural Publics. Limn Issue Number Seven: Public Infrastructures/Infrastructural Publics. Access at link.