Peter Chonka
Biographic Data
| ID | 164909 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Chonka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Chonka |
| SIGNATURE | CHONKA P |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9871-1377 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 52 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The politics of translation in African-language generative AI: Opportunities and challenges for critical engagement, education and resistance
This article explores the opportunities and challenges of knowledge exchange in East Africa around the societal implications of generative AI. These technologies’ capacity to work with and in certain African indigenous languages is increasing rapidly and generative AI is quickly becoming part of the region’s digital platform landscape – albeit in an unpredictable and experimental fashion. Drawing from the authors’ practice-based research in Somal…
The Political and Moral Economy of Telecom Corporate Social Responsibility in Somalia
This article focuses on a commercial sector deeply entwined with diaspora humanitarianism: transnational Somali telecommunications. Telecom companies in Somalia are celebrated for innovations in digital finance and are powerful economic actors in a context affected by conflict and recurrent humanitarian crises. Emphasising the embeddedness of mobile money, the article analyses online content from a leading provider about its ‘corporate social res…
(De)constructing research ‘expertise’ in transnational participatory warfare
Focusing on a case study of offline and online violence in Somalia/Somaliland and the disputed city of Las Anod, this article presents an (auto)netnographic analysis of transnational digital hostility and participatory warfare. It argues that academic ‘expertise’ is an under-theorised but significant aspect of complex conflict dynamics as they play out on social media. The affordances of digital platforms can compel researchers to engage in new w…
Displacement stigma, insecurity and inequality in urban Somalia: The Limits of Digital Financial Empowerment
The growth of Somali cities is shaped by the settlement of people displaced from rural areas by conflict and ecological shocks. ‘Internally Displaced People’ disproportionately hail from minoritized clan, caste and racialised groups, often settling in cities where they are viewed as outsiders. This article examines the stigma and insecurities associated with displacement and relates this to narratives of (post)conflict development where digital e…
Mobile money, (dis)empowerment and state reconstruction in Somalia's conflicted digital economy
Mobile money has developed as an indigenous digital innovation in a Somali setting characterized by state weakness and scarcity of local physical currency. On one level, this article presents experiences of this financial technology (and 'cashlessness') from perspectives of marginalized people displaced by conflict and ecological shocks. However, we also analyse these everyday experiences in the context of rapid urbanization, connecting them to t…
Social media, youth (im)mobilities, and the risks of connectivity in urban Somaliland
Young people in cities in the Horn of Africa engage with diasporic mobility through social media on a daily basis. Apparent opportunities on these platforms both reflect and shape ideas about life in the diaspora, potential migration, and social mobility. These connections also bring risks of scamming, extortion and misinformation that contribute to the involuntary immobility of those who wish to move for economic or educational opportunities. Dr…
Precarious Urbanism: Displacement, Belonging and the Reconstruction of Somali Cities
Precarious Urbanism: Displacement, Belonging and the Reconstruction of Somali Cities
This book explores relationships between war, displacement and city-making. Focusing on people seeking refuge in Somali cities after being forced to migrate by violence, environmental shocks or economic pressures, it highlights how in-migrants are actively transforming urban space. Using first-hand testimonies and participatory photography, the book documents and analyses the micropolitics of urban camp management and infrastructure, evictions an…
Algorithmic power and African indigenous languages: Search engine autocomplete and the global multilingual Internet
Predictive language technologies – such as Google Search’s Autocomplete – constitute forms of algorithmic power that reflect and compound global power imbalances between Western technology companies and multilingual Internet users in the global South. Increasing attention is being paid to predictive language technologies and their impacts on individual users and public discourse. However, there is a lack of scholarship on how such technologies in…
Eyes on the ground and eyes in the sky: Security narratives, participatory visual methods and knowledge production in ‘danger zones’
This article reflects on the use of narrative interviews alongside participatory and remote-access visual methods to produce knowledge on and in conflict-affected settings. It details our iterative and reactive experiences of navigating transnational academic, policy and humanitarian networks to attempt to undertake ethical research on the security experiences of displaced people in Somali cities and facilitate their engagement with policymakers.…
Precarious labour – Precarious lives: Photographic glimpses from displaced people in Somali cities
Displacement and mass migration have contributed to extremely rapid urbanization in the Somali territories of the Horn of Africa. Often displaced from rural areas, newcomers to cities hope to find safety and the means to rebuild their lives. However, displaced people often find themselves stranded in dilapidated settlements and entangled in exploitative labour relations or exhausting forms of petty entrepreneurship in order to survive. This artic…
Self‐determination and a shattered star: Statehood and national identity in the Somali Horn of Africa
This article explores the articulation—in different forms, at different periods, and by different actors—of ‘national self‐determination’ in Somalia and across the Somali‐speaking regions of the Horn of Africa. It explores how this concept can be understood in the context of protracted political fragmentation in Somalia—considering unresolved debates over the ideological foundations of state reconstruction, disagreements about the suitability of …
Precarious spaces and violent site effects: Experiences from Hargeisa's urban margins
This paper addresses precarity from a spatial perspective. It draws attention to how power becomes inscribed in urban space and shapes particular spatial arrangements connected with socio-economic vulnerabilities. This is empirically illustrated with a case study of Hargeisa, a city historically marked by the violence of the Somali civil war. Our analysis draws on interviews and participant photography, to foreground the ‘everyday’ experiences of…
Bookfairs: New ‘old’ media and the digital politics of Somali literary promotion
Since 2008, Book Fairs held across the Somali Horn of Africa have been a remarkable feature of civil society activism in a region usually associated with conflict and crisis. At the forefront of these efforts to promote Somali-language print culture is a digitally connected and social media-savvy generation of young people. This article explores the work done by books (as symbolic objects) and Book Fairs (as multimedia cultural festivals) to prov…
War and city-making in Somalia: Property, power and disposable lives
Rapid urbanisation in Somalia, as in many other war-torn countries, is driven by in-migration of displaced people who are often amassed in camps. Although such camps become institutionalised sites of exclusion where ‘bare life’ is generated and disposed, they are also characterised by socially messy and continuously evolving relations of space, power, violence and displacement. The article draws on fieldwork with displaced people in Somali cities…
The Empire Tweets Back? #HumanitarianStarWars and Memetic Self-Critique in the Aid Industry
In 2015, a series of memes appeared on Twitter under the hashtag #HumanitarianStarWars. Combining still images from the original Star Wars movies with ironic references to humanitarian/development jargon and institutions, the memes presented a humorous reflection on the modern aid industry. While memetic content has become an increasingly scrutinized area in digital culture studies-particularly with regard to unbounded and anonymous online commun…
News media and political contestation in the Somali territories: Defining the Parameters of a Transnational Digital Public
This article examines the extent to which different forms and technologies of media production facilitate popular participation in a ‘digital public’ across the politically fragmented Somali territories. Based on textual analysis of local media and comparative examination of news production and consumption, the article emphasises the dual character of the public sphere in the Somali context. Here, local media production centred in individual capi…
New media, performative violence, and state reconstruction in Mogadishu
Since 2012, Mogadishu has been the site of both unprecedented optimism around the re-emergence of the Somali state, as well as persistent violence perpetrated by the Islamist militants of Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujahidiin (Al Shabaab). In attacking hotels and restaurants, as well as other sites broadly associated with the state, Al Shabaab has prosecuted a strategy intended to foment the ungovernability of the city, undermine the nascent Federal G…
Cartoons in conflict: Amin Arts and transnational geopolitical imagination in the Somali-language public sphere
Amin Amir is the most popular and prolific political cartoonist in modern Somalia. His work is disseminated digitally and in print across the Somali territories on a daily basis. His appeal to such broad audiences is remarkable given the extreme political fragmentation of the media environment and that his renderings of broad themes of Somali political discourse (as well as highly localised developments) are all transmitted digitally into the reg…
The real politics of the horn of Africa: Money, war and the business of power
Alex De Waal’s ambitious and stimulating exploration of the ‘real politics’ of the Horn of Africa attempts to do exactly what it says on the tin: namely to provide a coherent theoretical account of
Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity By Cawo M. Abdi
The eponymous ‘elusive Jannah’ of Cawo M. Abdi’s study on global Somali diaspora communities refers to notions of paradise and holistically conceptualized well-being embedded in people’s imaginaries of migration from the Horn of Africa. Whilst numerous other studies have documented the experiences and challenges of Somali diaspora communities in different global contexts (cf. McGown 1999, Horst 2004, Collet 2007, Kusow & Bjork 2007), Abdi’s nuanc…
Spies, stonework, and thesuuq: Somali nationalism and the narrative politics of pro-Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujaahidiinonline propaganda
Since 2013, media affiliates of Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujaahidiin (HSM) have been producing and disseminating online documentary-style videos presenting daily life in areas of south-central Somalia under the militant group’s control. In the context of their wider ‘jihad’ waged against foreign occupiers and an ‘apostate’ Federal Government, these videos feature narratives of nationalist economic self-determination as alternatives to aid dependence…
War and city-making in Somalia: Property, power and disposable lives
Rapid urbanisation in Somalia, as in many other war-torn countries, is driven by in-migration of displaced people who are often amassed in camps. Although such camps become institutionalised sites of exclusion where ‘bare life’ is generated and disposed, they are also characterised by socially messy and continuously evolving relations of space, power, violence and displacement. The article draws on fieldwork with displaced people in Somali cities…
The real politics of the horn of Africa: Money, war and the business of power
Alex De Waal’s ambitious and stimulating exploration of the ‘real politics’ of the Horn of Africa attempts to do exactly what it says on the tin: namely to provide a coherent theoretical account of
Spies, stonework, and thesuuq: Somali nationalism and the narrative politics of pro-Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujaahidiinonline propaganda
Since 2013, media affiliates of Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujaahidiin (HSM) have been producing and disseminating online documentary-style videos presenting daily life in areas of south-central Somalia under the militant group’s control. In the context of their wider ‘jihad’ waged against foreign occupiers and an ‘apostate’ Federal Government, these videos feature narratives of nationalist economic self-determination as alternatives to aid dependence…
News media and political contestation in the Somali territories: Defining the Parameters of a Transnational Digital Public
This article examines the extent to which different forms and technologies of media production facilitate popular participation in a ‘digital public’ across the politically fragmented Somali territories. Based on textual analysis of local media and comparative examination of news production and consumption, the article emphasises the dual character of the public sphere in the Somali context. Here, local media production centred in individual capi…
Social media, youth (im)mobilities, and the risks of connectivity in urban Somaliland
Young people in cities in the Horn of Africa engage with diasporic mobility through social media on a daily basis. Apparent opportunities on these platforms both reflect and shape ideas about life in the diaspora, potential migration, and social mobility. These connections also bring risks of scamming, extortion and misinformation that contribute to the involuntary immobility of those who wish to move for economic or educational opportunities. Dr…
Self‐determination and a shattered star: Statehood and national identity in the Somali Horn of Africa
This article explores the articulation—in different forms, at different periods, and by different actors—of ‘national self‐determination’ in Somalia and across the Somali‐speaking regions of the Horn of Africa. It explores how this concept can be understood in the context of protracted political fragmentation in Somalia—considering unresolved debates over the ideological foundations of state reconstruction, disagreements about the suitability of …
Bookfairs: New ‘old’ media and the digital politics of Somali literary promotion
Since 2008, Book Fairs held across the Somali Horn of Africa have been a remarkable feature of civil society activism in a region usually associated with conflict and crisis. At the forefront of these efforts to promote Somali-language print culture is a digitally connected and social media-savvy generation of young people. This article explores the work done by books (as symbolic objects) and Book Fairs (as multimedia cultural festivals) to prov…
Mobile money, (dis)empowerment and state reconstruction in Somalia's conflicted digital economy
Mobile money has developed as an indigenous digital innovation in a Somali setting characterized by state weakness and scarcity of local physical currency. On one level, this article presents experiences of this financial technology (and 'cashlessness') from perspectives of marginalized people displaced by conflict and ecological shocks. However, we also analyse these everyday experiences in the context of rapid urbanization, connecting them to t…
Eyes on the ground and eyes in the sky: Security narratives, participatory visual methods and knowledge production in ‘danger zones’
This article reflects on the use of narrative interviews alongside participatory and remote-access visual methods to produce knowledge on and in conflict-affected settings. It details our iterative and reactive experiences of navigating transnational academic, policy and humanitarian networks to attempt to undertake ethical research on the security experiences of displaced people in Somali cities and facilitate their engagement with policymakers.…
The Empire Tweets Back? #HumanitarianStarWars and Memetic Self-Critique in the Aid Industry
In 2015, a series of memes appeared on Twitter under the hashtag #HumanitarianStarWars. Combining still images from the original Star Wars movies with ironic references to humanitarian/development jargon and institutions, the memes presented a humorous reflection on the modern aid industry. While memetic content has become an increasingly scrutinized area in digital culture studies-particularly with regard to unbounded and anonymous online commun…
New media, performative violence, and state reconstruction in Mogadishu
Since 2012, Mogadishu has been the site of both unprecedented optimism around the re-emergence of the Somali state, as well as persistent violence perpetrated by the Islamist militants of Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujahidiin (Al Shabaab). In attacking hotels and restaurants, as well as other sites broadly associated with the state, Al Shabaab has prosecuted a strategy intended to foment the ungovernability of the city, undermine the nascent Federal G…
Cartoons in conflict: Amin Arts and transnational geopolitical imagination in the Somali-language public sphere
Amin Amir is the most popular and prolific political cartoonist in modern Somalia. His work is disseminated digitally and in print across the Somali territories on a daily basis. His appeal to such broad audiences is remarkable given the extreme political fragmentation of the media environment and that his renderings of broad themes of Somali political discourse (as well as highly localised developments) are all transmitted digitally into the reg…
Cartoons in conflict: Amin Arts and transnational geopolitical imagination in the Somali-language public sphere
Amin Amir is the most popular and prolific political cartoonist in modern Somalia. His work is disseminated digitally and in print across the Somali territories on a daily basis. His appeal to such broad audiences is remarkable given the extreme political fragmentation of the media environment and that his renderings of broad themes of Somali political discourse (as well as highly localised developments) are all transmitted digitally into the reg…
The real politics of the horn of Africa: Money, war and the business of power
Alex De Waal’s ambitious and stimulating exploration of the ‘real politics’ of the Horn of Africa attempts to do exactly what it says on the tin: namely to provide a coherent theoretical account of
Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity By Cawo M. Abdi
The eponymous ‘elusive Jannah’ of Cawo M. Abdi’s study on global Somali diaspora communities refers to notions of paradise and holistically conceptualized well-being embedded in people’s imaginaries of migration from the Horn of Africa. Whilst numerous other studies have documented the experiences and challenges of Somali diaspora communities in different global contexts (cf. McGown 1999, Horst 2004, Collet 2007, Kusow & Bjork 2007), Abdi’s nuanc…
Spies, stonework, and thesuuq: Somali nationalism and the narrative politics of pro-Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujaahidiinonline propaganda
Since 2013, media affiliates of Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujaahidiin (HSM) have been producing and disseminating online documentary-style videos presenting daily life in areas of south-central Somalia under the militant group’s control. In the context of their wider ‘jihad’ waged against foreign occupiers and an ‘apostate’ Federal Government, these videos feature narratives of nationalist economic self-determination as alternatives to aid dependence…
New media, performative violence, and state reconstruction in Mogadishu
Since 2012, Mogadishu has been the site of both unprecedented optimism around the re-emergence of the Somali state, as well as persistent violence perpetrated by the Islamist militants of Harakat Al Shabaab Al Mujahidiin (Al Shabaab). In attacking hotels and restaurants, as well as other sites broadly associated with the state, Al Shabaab has prosecuted a strategy intended to foment the ungovernability of the city, undermine the nascent Federal G…
Bookfairs: New ‘old’ media and the digital politics of Somali literary promotion
Since 2008, Book Fairs held across the Somali Horn of Africa have been a remarkable feature of civil society activism in a region usually associated with conflict and crisis. At the forefront of these efforts to promote Somali-language print culture is a digitally connected and social media-savvy generation of young people. This article explores the work done by books (as symbolic objects) and Book Fairs (as multimedia cultural festivals) to prov…
War and city-making in Somalia: Property, power and disposable lives
Rapid urbanisation in Somalia, as in many other war-torn countries, is driven by in-migration of displaced people who are often amassed in camps. Although such camps become institutionalised sites of exclusion where ‘bare life’ is generated and disposed, they are also characterised by socially messy and continuously evolving relations of space, power, violence and displacement. The article draws on fieldwork with displaced people in Somali cities…
The Empire Tweets Back? #HumanitarianStarWars and Memetic Self-Critique in the Aid Industry
In 2015, a series of memes appeared on Twitter under the hashtag #HumanitarianStarWars. Combining still images from the original Star Wars movies with ironic references to humanitarian/development jargon and institutions, the memes presented a humorous reflection on the modern aid industry. While memetic content has become an increasingly scrutinized area in digital culture studies-particularly with regard to unbounded and anonymous online commun…
News media and political contestation in the Somali territories: Defining the Parameters of a Transnational Digital Public
This article examines the extent to which different forms and technologies of media production facilitate popular participation in a ‘digital public’ across the politically fragmented Somali territories. Based on textual analysis of local media and comparative examination of news production and consumption, the article emphasises the dual character of the public sphere in the Somali context. Here, local media production centred in individual capi…
Precarious labour – Precarious lives: Photographic glimpses from displaced people in Somali cities
Displacement and mass migration have contributed to extremely rapid urbanization in the Somali territories of the Horn of Africa. Often displaced from rural areas, newcomers to cities hope to find safety and the means to rebuild their lives. However, displaced people often find themselves stranded in dilapidated settlements and entangled in exploitative labour relations or exhausting forms of petty entrepreneurship in order to survive. This artic…
Self‐determination and a shattered star: Statehood and national identity in the Somali Horn of Africa
This article explores the articulation—in different forms, at different periods, and by different actors—of ‘national self‐determination’ in Somalia and across the Somali‐speaking regions of the Horn of Africa. It explores how this concept can be understood in the context of protracted political fragmentation in Somalia—considering unresolved debates over the ideological foundations of state reconstruction, disagreements about the suitability of …
Precarious spaces and violent site effects: Experiences from Hargeisa's urban margins
This paper addresses precarity from a spatial perspective. It draws attention to how power becomes inscribed in urban space and shapes particular spatial arrangements connected with socio-economic vulnerabilities. This is empirically illustrated with a case study of Hargeisa, a city historically marked by the violence of the Somali civil war. Our analysis draws on interviews and participant photography, to foreground the ‘everyday’ experiences of…
Eyes on the ground and eyes in the sky: Security narratives, participatory visual methods and knowledge production in ‘danger zones’
This article reflects on the use of narrative interviews alongside participatory and remote-access visual methods to produce knowledge on and in conflict-affected settings. It details our iterative and reactive experiences of navigating transnational academic, policy and humanitarian networks to attempt to undertake ethical research on the security experiences of displaced people in Somali cities and facilitate their engagement with policymakers.…
Precarious Urbanism: Displacement, Belonging and the Reconstruction of Somali Cities
Precarious Urbanism: Displacement, Belonging and the Reconstruction of Somali Cities
This book explores relationships between war, displacement and city-making. Focusing on people seeking refuge in Somali cities after being forced to migrate by violence, environmental shocks or economic pressures, it highlights how in-migrants are actively transforming urban space. Using first-hand testimonies and participatory photography, the book documents and analyses the micropolitics of urban camp management and infrastructure, evictions an…
Algorithmic power and African indigenous languages: Search engine autocomplete and the global multilingual Internet
Predictive language technologies – such as Google Search’s Autocomplete – constitute forms of algorithmic power that reflect and compound global power imbalances between Western technology companies and multilingual Internet users in the global South. Increasing attention is being paid to predictive language technologies and their impacts on individual users and public discourse. However, there is a lack of scholarship on how such technologies in…
Social media, youth (im)mobilities, and the risks of connectivity in urban Somaliland
Young people in cities in the Horn of Africa engage with diasporic mobility through social media on a daily basis. Apparent opportunities on these platforms both reflect and shape ideas about life in the diaspora, potential migration, and social mobility. These connections also bring risks of scamming, extortion and misinformation that contribute to the involuntary immobility of those who wish to move for economic or educational opportunities. Dr…
Displacement stigma, insecurity and inequality in urban Somalia: The Limits of Digital Financial Empowerment
The growth of Somali cities is shaped by the settlement of people displaced from rural areas by conflict and ecological shocks. ‘Internally Displaced People’ disproportionately hail from minoritized clan, caste and racialised groups, often settling in cities where they are viewed as outsiders. This article examines the stigma and insecurities associated with displacement and relates this to narratives of (post)conflict development where digital e…
Mobile money, (dis)empowerment and state reconstruction in Somalia's conflicted digital economy
Mobile money has developed as an indigenous digital innovation in a Somali setting characterized by state weakness and scarcity of local physical currency. On one level, this article presents experiences of this financial technology (and 'cashlessness') from perspectives of marginalized people displaced by conflict and ecological shocks. However, we also analyse these everyday experiences in the context of rapid urbanization, connecting them to t…
The politics of translation in African-language generative AI: Opportunities and challenges for critical engagement, education and resistance
This article explores the opportunities and challenges of knowledge exchange in East Africa around the societal implications of generative AI. These technologies’ capacity to work with and in certain African indigenous languages is increasing rapidly and generative AI is quickly becoming part of the region’s digital platform landscape – albeit in an unpredictable and experimental fashion. Drawing from the authors’ practice-based research in Somal…
The Political and Moral Economy of Telecom Corporate Social Responsibility in Somalia
This article focuses on a commercial sector deeply entwined with diaspora humanitarianism: transnational Somali telecommunications. Telecom companies in Somalia are celebrated for innovations in digital finance and are powerful economic actors in a context affected by conflict and recurrent humanitarian crises. Emphasising the embeddedness of mobile money, the article analyses online content from a leading provider about its ‘corporate social res…
(De)constructing research ‘expertise’ in transnational participatory warfare
Focusing on a case study of offline and online violence in Somalia/Somaliland and the disputed city of Las Anod, this article presents an (auto)netnographic analysis of transnational digital hostility and participatory warfare. It argues that academic ‘expertise’ is an under-theorised but significant aspect of complex conflict dynamics as they play out on social media. The affordances of digital platforms can compel researchers to engage in new w…
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Politics (16 works) · Somali (14 works) · Law (9 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Geography (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works)