Robert Wyrod on Global China and International Development: Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Africa

Monday September 23 at 1:30-3:30 in the Boulder Creek Room of the Boulder Public Library. Our featured presenter was Professor Robert Wyrod, a CU faculty member in the Program on International Affairs and the Department of Women and Gender Studies. The subject of this talk and discussionwas “Global China and International Development: Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Africa.” Here is a further description of Robert’s presentation and his background in general.

Robert Wyrod will be presenting his research on China’s role as a development actor in Uganda. For several years, Robert has been conducting ethnographic research at four Chinese-funded projects in Uganda. The presentation will discuss similarities and differences across the fieldsites and highlight both the promise and peril of China as a development partner. His research in Uganda has been generously funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Robert Wyrod is an Associate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department and the International Affairs Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Robert has been conducting research in Uganda for over twenty years. His award-winning first book, AIDS and Masculinity in the African City: Privilege, Inequality, and Modern Manhood, was published by University of California Press in 2016. Based on fieldwork in the Bwaise community in Kampala Uganda, this book was the first to examine how the AIDS epidemic has shaped masculinity in Africa. The research Robert is presenting is the basis of his second book, Eastern Horizon: Opportunity and Inequality in the Chinese Era of African Development.