Eric Cezne

Eric Cezne is a researcher at the African Studies Centre Leiden, working on the political geographies of energy transformations and green industrialisation in Africa, with a current focus on hydrogen energy. His research combines elements from Human Geography, International Relations, and African Studies and draws on methodologies like ethnography, discourse analysis and, more recently, social cartography.

Eric has completed a PhD in International Relations (cum laude, 2021) at the University of Groningen and has held research and teaching positions at Utecht University (Dep. of Human Geography and Spatial Planning), the Free University of Amsterdam (Dep. of Political Science and Public Administration), the Centre for Global Cooperation Research (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).

Eric’s research has been published in journals such as Political Geography, World Development, African Affairs, Economy & Society, Human Geography, and The Extractive Industries and Society, among others. His work covers empirical realities in Mozambique, Guinea, Namibia, South Africa, and Brazil, approaching themes including Africa’s South–South relations, infrastructure politics, labour geographies, transnational activism, racialisation, and African agency. He is the co-editor of the book Africa's Global Infrastructures: South-South Transformations in Practice (with Jana Hönke & Yifan Yang, Hurst/ Oxford University Press, 2024) and the lead guest editor of the journal special issue Green Hydrogen in the Global South: Politics, Spaces, and Transformations (Political Geography).

Eric has organised the first Africa–Latin America civil society dialogue on green hydrogen and currently (co‑)leads research projects on environmental activism in energy transitions, questions of labour and skills building in hydrogen sectors, and the emergence of low-carbon fertiliser industries in Africa. He has acquired research funding from the European Commission (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship), Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the Leiden–Delft–Erasmus Global Fund.

Keywords: Africa's South-South relations, energy transitions, decarbonisation, green hydrogen, extractive industries, infrastructure politics, BRICS, African agency, political geography.