Bio
Mehari Taddele Maru is Adjunct Professor at SAIS Europe
Part-time Professor, School of Transnational Governance and Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute, Florence
Professor Mehari Taddele Maru has more than 23 years of teaching and research experience in geopolitics, peace and security, law and governance, migration and humanitarian affairs, and professionally worked in multilateral and transnational governance bodies including the United Nations, the African Union, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and other transboundary regulatory bodies.
Professor Maru is currently the Academic Coordinator of the Young African Leaders Programme (YALP) at the School of Transnational Governance, and Part-time Professor at the Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In addition, he is a Visiting Professor and was Senior Fellow at the NATO Defense College (Rome). He was Senior expert at the Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration, a Fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (Bruges); the Nigerian Defence College (Abuja); the Nigerian Armed Forces Command and Staff College (Jaji); and the UN Institute for Economic Development and Planning (Dakar). He was a member of the Technical Committee of the Tana High-Level Security Forum (modelled on and uniquely related to the Munich Security Forum for Africa). This is in addition to his work as Programme Head at the Institute for Security Studies and Director at Addis Ababa University.
Previously, he served as Legal Expert at the Office of the Legal Counsel of the African Union Commission (AUC), and Programme Coordinator for Migration at the AUC. He also served as Chief Strategist, Lead Migration Expert and Legal Drafter for the IGAD and the AU High-level Advisory Group.
Prof. Mehari Taddele Maru is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford universities. He holds a PhD in Legal Sciences from JL Giessen University, Germany, an MPA from Harvard, an MSc from the University of Oxford and an LLB from Addis Ababa University. For a complete list of publications, please visit
Professor Maru’s website.
Courses
- Political Economy of Africa
This interdisciplinary course delves into the political economy of Africa from colonial times to the 21st century. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach, integrating insights from political sciences, economics, sociology, and history to probe contemporary development issues in Africa.
The scope of the course ranges from post-independence challenges to contemporary factors influencing governance, institutions, conflict, and the trajectory of Africa's development. Theoretical and policy analysis tools are employed to study political and socio-economic dynamics in contemporary Africa. Key areas of investigation include the underlying reasons for underdevelopment and conflict in many African countries; the role of global powers in Africa; and the effects of current democratization and growth patterns on the continent.