Stylianos Moshonas

I am presently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) at the University of Antwerp, working on the four-year senior FWO fundamental research project ‘Understanding the political economy of Congo's civil service remunerations and recruitment system’ (2020-2023), under the supervision of promoters Prof. Tom De Herdt (IOB), Kristof Titeca (IOB) and Albert Malukisa Nkuku (UCC-Kinshasa). I joined the IOB in 2017, as a postdoctoral researcher on the research project ‘Power, poverty and politics in the DRC’, coordinated by ODI under the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium programme, where my research line was on power and policy-making in the DR Congo.

I hold degrees in economics and politics from the universities of Grenoble-Alpes, Sussex and Bristol (2001-2008), and a PhD in politics from the university of Bristol (2013). In the past, I have taught in African politics at the universities of Bristol (2009), Lubumbashi (2014-2015), and Warwick (2015-2017), and worked as a research fellow at the School of Media and Communications at the university of Leeds (2013-2014). Aside my work in academia, I have collaborated with the Open Society Foundation’s Civil Society Leadership Award scholarship programme, and more recently, with their Civil Society Scholar Award; and carried out work as a consultant (lead researcher) for two different DFID-funded political economy analysis research studies, both focused on the DRC’s public administration and health sector.

My current research interests are centred on African politics, particularly in central Africa and the DRC, and the political economy of development; the recent work I have carried out has focused on the political economy of public sector reforms, the politics of human resource and payroll management, as well as the role of development aid in institutional reform processes. While my doctoral research focused on the relation between development aid and institutional reforms in the DRC (published in 2018 by Routledge), my postdoctoral work has moved on to examine the politics underpinning administrative dynamics within Kinshasa’s central bureaucracy. I am interested in the political economy of public sector remunerations, the issues and stakes surrounding recruitment of civil servants, and the links binding these aspects to broader political processes – such as political mobilisation and rent allocation.