Dr. Claire Mercer

Biography

Claire Mercer is a human geographer working at the intersection of human geography and African studies. Her early work developed a critique of the NGO-ization of development, and her subsequent research has focused on postcolonial approaches to civil society and diaspora. Currently, Claire is investigating peripheral urbanization in African cities. She has conducted research in Tanzania, Cameroon, and the UK, exploring the significance of property in the middle class's reproduction in suburban Dar es Salaam. Her work examines how self-build housing in urban peripheries becomes a central means for the middle class in contemporary Tanzania. New neighborhoods, land acquisition, and housing construction are now seen as vehicles for the accumulation of material and aesthetic assets, creating new spaces of inequality in urban periphery regions. A book based on her research, titled The Suburban Frontier: The Middle Class Construction of Dar es Salaam, is set to be published by the University of California Press in Autumn 2024. Claire is also the Principal Investigator of an ESRC-funded research project titled Home-Grown Growth in African Cities, which focuses on how self-build housing drives urban economic growth in Ghana and Tanzania. Additionally, she has authored a book with Ben Page and Martin Evans titled Development in the African Diaspora: Place Politics at Home, published by Zed Books, and is involved in various editorial roles in academic journals.

Research Interests

Experience