Ismaël Maazaz

Ismaël Maazaz is a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere university, Finland. Based at the faculty of Business and Management, he recently completed an Institute for Advanced Study fellowship (2023-2025) and will remain at the faculty as a Kone foundation grant holder (2025-2029). 

Since his PhD years, his research has focused on the anthropology and politics of water in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2022, he completed his doctoral dissertation entitled “Divided Waters: a Hydropolitical Analysis of Space, Development and Labour in N'Djamena, Chad” at the Centre of African Studies of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. This dissertation offered an ethnographic exploration of the everyday water politics in the Chadian capital, looking at the precarities and temporalities that shape patterns of the urban waterscape. He was then a Saltire fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2022). As a Saltire fellow, he conducted a comparative analysis of water supply and access in three cities (Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso; Maroua in Cameroon; N'Djamena in Chad), with the additional support of the Atlas Grant of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, before joining Tampere university as a IaS postdo. At the IAS, his project examined the impact of water-related disasters (floods and droughts) on livelihoods at the Chad-Cameroon borderland. Previously, Ismaël worked as a research coordinator and project manager at the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA), based at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria (2016-2018). 

In Tampere, Ismaël is active within the Space and Political Agency research group, the Anthropology seminar and the Politics of Nature and the Environment research group.

Ismaël's current Kone foundation project is entitled “Global Liquid: Unravelling the sociopolitical construction of waterscapes in Finland and Cameroon” (2025-2028). It consists in a theoretical and empirical foray into the making of waterscapes in times of global climate change. The project focuses on two case studies: the city of Nokia in Finland and the city of Yagoua in Cameroon. Drawing on existing debates in political ecology, development studies and urban anthropology, this project examines local public policies, community experiences and practices against the backdrop of water-related hardships such as floods or droughts, drinking water scarcity and contaminations leading to waterborne epidemics. It excavates the divisive sociopolitical impacts of global trends such as climate change on everyday livelihoods and practices by analysing waterscapes as contested landscapes structured by flows of capital, money and power. The project simultaneously documents the global convergence of waterscapes shaped by climate change and the fragmentation of the infrastructural landscapes leading to increased makeshifts and improvisational tactics devised by local communities to cope with the contemporary water-related hardships.

Ismaël's research deals with water politics, climate resilience and natural disasters at the intersection of political ecology, urban anthropology and development studies, primarily in West and Central Africa where he has conducted years of field research (Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Burkina Faso).

Books:

(Under review) Water margins: Urban Waterscapes at the Chad-Cameroon borderland. London: University College London Press

(Accepted) with Pauline Guinard and Emilie Guitard. Looking for and Learning From Public Spaces in African Cities. Paris: Africae

Peer-reviewed articles :

(Accepted) “D’une rive l’autre : Réponses communautaires et institutionnelles face aux inondations à la frontière tchado-camerounaise » Politique Africaine.

(Under review) “ L’artefact fluide. Régime d’improvisation et relations sociopolitiques autour des bornes-fontaines au Tchad, Cameroun et Burkina Faso” Tracés. Revue de Sciences Humaines.

2024. “Sticking Around or Fading Away: Water Patronage and Value in Chad” in Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 94(2):231-250. DOI:10.1017/S0001972024000214

2024. “Pushcarts and Fountains. Masculinity, Agency and Labour Culture among Water Workers of N’Djamena, Chad” in Development and Change 55(5):10. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12801.

2021.“Hydraulic Bricolages: Coexisting Water Supply and Access Regimes in N’Djamena, Chad” in EchoGéo, 57: DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/echogeo.22514

2021. (with Abiola Victoria Ayodokun, Victor Chinedu Eze& Vitus Ukoji) “The Nigeria Watch Project and the Challenges in the Study of Lethal Violence in Nigeria” in Sources, 2: 223-236.

2018.“A Southern Connexion: Chadian Extraversion Policies and the Repercussions for the Libyan Territory” in Egypte-Monde-Arabe, 18: 31-43. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ema.3951.

2017.“Pétrole et ‘Syndrome Circassien’: Emergence et Fragmentation d’un Assemblage Global au Tchad dans les Années 2000” in Cahiers Tchadiens des Sciences Humaines, 1. 

Book chapter :

(Accepted) “Multiplex Spaces: Contradicting Usages and Policies of Water in the Public Spaces of N’Djamena (Chad)”in Looking for and Learning Public Spaces in African Cities edited by Pauline Guinard, Emilie Guitard and Ismaël Maazaz. Paris: Africae.

Blog and media entries:

“Less Flow, More Pressure: Accessing Water in N’Djamena in times of Covid-19” Developing Economics, Pressure in the City blog series, 5 March 2021:

https://developingeconomics.org/2021/03/05/less-flow-more-pressure-accessing-water-in-ndjamena-in-times-of-covid-19/

“Places à vivre de N’Djamena” Africa4 blog series, 24 May 2017 : https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2017/05/24/places-a-vivre-de-n-djamena_1816821/