Project title
A Neofunctionalist Reading: African Union Integration and Algeria
Supervisors: Dr. Soeren Keil and Dr. David Bates
Profile summary
I am a fully-funded Ph.D. student who got a scholarship from the Algerian government studying at Canterbury Christ Church University in the Faculty of Politics and International Relations. My Ph.D. thesis is about the African Union integration process, its current outcomes, objectives, and achievements. My research focuses mainly on the reasons behind the slow progress of this continental organization to achieve high degrees of integration like the European Union example. Thus, the research uses Algeria as a case study scrutinizing its performance and attitudes in this organization investigating whether it is a country that pushed for deep African economic integration, security level of integration or no integration at all. Therefore, the Algerian foreign policy is studied and analyzed in the thesis. My research attempts to apply some principles within Neofunctionalism as a European Union integration theory to study both the African Union integration process as well as the Algerian foreign policy in general and towards the African Union in specific.
Biography
As an Algerian student, I studied my undergraduate degree at the University of LAARBI BEN M’Hidi in Oum El Bouaghi (Algeria), I graduated in 2014 with the first-class honor in English Literature and Civilisation. In 2016, I got my Master degree with a first-class honor in Anglo- American Studies. This assisted me in participating in an Algerian national competition to win a scholarship to carry on my Ph.D. in the United Kingdom. Because I successfully passed the exam of the competition, I received a fully-funded scholarship from the Algerian government so that I came to the UK in September 2016, to start my pre-sessional program in Canterbury Christ Church University. After that, I got an offer to start my Ph.D. program at the same university in the faculty of Politics and International Relations under the supervision of Dr. Soren Keil and Dr. David Bates as my chair.
From my early undergraduate degree, I had a great passion for studying political sciences, comparative politics, foreign policy, and world politics. First, my Master thesis was a comparative study between the past American Indian experiences and the current Palestinian cause with the Israeli colonizers and I concluded finding some similarities of the ways and strategies that were used to eradicate the native settlers of these two different lands. Second, my PhD studies in the United Kingdom and exactly in Canterbury Christ Church University offered me with more knowledge in the field of political sciences, international relations, foreign policy and also European Union Studies. This opportunity, indeed, broadened my passion in political sciences and also it made me think of other interesting research subjects that I may conduct in the future for my personal, academic career.
Seminar Presentations:
Lamri Amel (2018) Algeria and the African Union. Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK (06-05-2018).