Douglas Yates Invited in Iraq to Present at a Conference on Oil and Politics

On October 8th, Professor Yates traveled to Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, Iraq to present a paper on "Ethnicity, Violence and Oil-Rent in Gabon" for an international scientific colloquium hosted by the Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO), one of the oldest French institutions specialized in the study of the Near East. His paper described how the influx of massive amounts of oil revenues contributes to numerous grievances, which can give rise to and perpetuate ethnic conflict. Other participants included Raid Fahmi (former Minister of Sciences, Baghdad), Ahmed Al Shamma (former Deputy Minister of Oil in Iraq), and Luis Martinez (CERI, Science-Po Paris).

On the occasion of this colloquium, Professor Yates was invited to join a new research group on the political-anthropology of petroleum. This research group will meet in different oil-regions around the world to study their social transformations and state trajectories.

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