Pierrick Leu, PhD-student
Pierrick Leu is a PhD-student at the Centre for African Studies in Basel. He works on the project Technological Artefacts in African Urban Settings lead by Prof. Elísio Macamo and funded by the Humer Foundation. In 2009 he completed a MA degree in geography and anthropology at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. His dissertation explores public and private appropriation processes in the case of the central market of the city of Ouahigouya in Burkina Faso. After his MA he was hired in 2009-10 as scientific collaborator in the project Globalisation of urban forms in Ouagadougou and Hanoi funded by the SNF and lead by the Institute of Geography in Neuchâtel. This latter research has been followed in 2011 by the exhibition Cosmopolis in Neuchâtel, to which he has contributed. He also worked as a consultant for planning agencies in Ouagadougou.
PhD-project
Pierrick Leu’s PhD-project (2011-2014) is taking part in the research project "Technological Artefacts in African Urban Settings" at the CASB. His topic relates to the constitution of road traffic in Ouagadougou’s two-wheeler mobility regime. The capital of Burkina Faso is experiencing recent important transformations in mobility, urban and socioeconomic fields. Considering the use of motorised two-wheelers as an entry point to analyse social life and public space in those cities, his research focuses on the learning process of driving and the constitution of normative patterns by road users in Ouagadougou’s streets. He is currently focusing on methodological issues related to the description and analysis of driver interactions in a two-wheelers regime, notably through empirical data on the daily negotiation of traffic lights at Ouagadougou’s crossroads.
Publications
Söderström, O., Dupuis B. and Leu, P. (forthcoming) Translocal urbanism: How Ouagadougou strategically uses decentralized cooperation, paper given at AEGIS Thematic Conference “Living the City”, Basel, Switzerland, 7-9 October 2010.
Leu, P. 2010 L’appropriation privée d’un espace public. L’exemple du Grand marché de Ouahigouya (Burkina Faso), Étude Recit n°32, Ouagadougou, Laboratoire Citoyennetés, 28 p. Link: http://www.labo-citoyennetes.org/etudes-recit.html
Dupuis, B., Leu, P. et Söderström, O. 2010 La mondialisation des formes urbaines à Ouagadougou, Rapport de recherche provisoire, Institut de Géographie, Université de Neuchâtel et Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique.
Link: http://www2.unine.ch/Jahia/site/inst_geographie/op/edit/pid/33196