Sustainable Development

Education

Ph.D., Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, 2014

B.A., Political Science, San Francisco State University, 2007

Research Interests

Environmental Political Theory, African Political Thought, Political Theory of Land and Sovereignty, Earth Jurisprudence, Postcolonial Theory, Indigenous Political Theory, Global Environmental Politics, Critical Development Studies, Interpretive Methodologies, Political Ethnography

Faculty Member of Distinction (2017)

Teaching

Voices in Sustainable Development, Environmental Humanities for Social Change, Traditions of Sustainability in Indigenous Societies, Senior Seminar in Sustainable Development, Land, Livelihoods, and Agrarian Development, Storytelling as Decolonizing Practice, Development Theory and Practice, Methods for Development Research and Practice

Background

Anatoli Ignatov is an Associate Professor of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University. Before joining Appalachian, Anatoli was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of South Florida Provost's Postdoctoral Initiative in the Social Sciences and Humanities "Global Change in a Dynamic World." He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University in 2014.

Anatoli's research has been focused on traditions of earth jurisprudence and ecological political thought in Africa that remain largely invisible within the dominant Euro-American orientations of political theory and development studies. The research has been supported by a Ghana Fulbright Scholar Award in 2017-2018. Anatoli is currently completing a monograph The Invisible Governance of Earth Spirits: African Diplomacies and Jurisprudence beyond the State. His scholarly work has appeared in Africa, Political Theory, GeoHumanities, Contemporary Political Theory, Theory & Event, as well as numerous edited volumes

Selected Publications

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

"Agurumyela's Art of Connection: Christopher Azaare's Project of Curating Gurensi History and Culture." Africa 90, no. 4 (August 2020): 649–66.

"Entangled Humanism as a Political Project." With Nicole Grove, Alexander Livingston, and William E. Connolly. Contemporary Political Theory 18, no 1 (2019): 115–134.

"The Earth as a Gift-Giving Ancestor: Nietzsche's Perspectivism and African Animism." Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy 45, no. 1 (February 2017): 52-75.

"African Orature as Ecophilosophy: Tuning in to the Voices of the Land." GeoHumanities: Space, Place, and the Humanities 2, no. 1 (May 2016): 76-91.

"Practices of Eco-sensation: Opening Doors of Perception to the Nonhuman." Theory and Event 14, no. 2 (June 2011).

Book Chapters

'Imperialism Is on Your Plate:' The Everyday Practice of Sankara's Revolution" in The Routledge Handbook on the Lived Experience of Ideology, ed. James Martel, Başak Ertür, Connal Parsley, and Naveed Mansoori, forthcoming 2024.

"The Sovereign Order of Tiƞa: Enduring Traditions of Earth Jurisprudence in Africa" in The Routledge Handbook of Law and the Anthropocene, ed. Peter Burdon and James Martel. New York: Routledge, 2023, 18-34.

"Theorizing with the Earth Spirits: African Eco-Humanism in a World of Becoming" in The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Politics and Theory, ed. Joel Kassiola and Tim Luke. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 503-538.

"The Skin and the Stool: Re-Crafting Histories of Belonging in Northern Ghana" in Politics of African Anticolonial Archive, ed. Isaac Kamola and Shiera Malik. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017, 151-175.

"Thoreau Goes to Ghana: On the Wild and the Tingane" in Common Good(s): Economy, Ecology, Political Theology, ed. Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Catherine Keller, and Elias Ortega-Aponte. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015, 267-285.

Edited Books, Articles, and Chapters

Editor (with Domenico Cristofaro), Tindaanaship and Tindaanas in Traditional Gurensi (Frafra) Communities: Land Use and Practices by Christopher Azaare Anabila in Africa's Local Intellectuals Series 90, no. 4 (August 2020).

"A biographical narrative of Azaare" in Africa's Local Intellectuals Series 90, no. 4 (August 2020).

Compiled, annotated, and edited (with Christopher Azaare) "Tindaanaship and Tindaanas in Traditional Gurensi (Frafra) Communities: Land Use and Practices" in Africa 90, no. 4 (August 2020): 667-682.

"Introduction: Christopher Anabila Azaare" in Politics of African Anticolonial Archive, ed. Isaac Kamola and Shiera Malik. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017, 121-124.

Compiled, annotated, and edited "Recollections of Past Events of British Colonial Rule in Northern Ghana, 1900-1956" by Christopher Azaare Anabila in Politics of African Anticolonial Archive, ed. Isaac Kamola and Shiera Malik. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017, 124-149.

Compiled, annotated, and edited "Sacred Trees in Ghana" by Christopher Azaare Anabila in Cold Mountain Review 45, no. 1 (Fall 2016).

Book Reviews and Essays

Review of Border Walls Gone Green: Nature and Anti-immigrant Politics in America by John Hultgren. New Political Science 39, no. 2 (14 March 2017), DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2017.1301316.

Review of Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline by Farah Godrej. Theory and Event 17, no.1 (March 2014).

Review of War, Commerce, and International Law by James Thuo Gathii. Law, Culture and the Humanities 6, no. 3 (October 2010), pp. 461-463.

"The Re-turn to the Other: In Search of New Ontologies of International Relations." Review essay of The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War against the Other by Anthony Burke and The Subject of Coexistence: Otherness in International Relations by Louiza Odysseos. borderlands 8, no. 2, 2009.

Interviews

“Sacred Trees and Earth Shrines: An Interview with Elder Christopher Azaare in Gowrie, Ghana, on the Role of Tindaanas or Earth Priests.” Cold Mountain Review 45, no. 1 (Fall 2016).http://coldmountainreview.org/sacred-trees-earth-shrines-interview-elder-christopher-azaare-gowrie-ghana-role-tindaanas-earth-priests/