Mark joined the Department of European & International Studies at King’s College in August 2021. He holds a PhD in international political economy (2010) and a MA in development studies (2006) from the University of Manchester. He also holds a first class undergraduate MA in politics & history from the University of Glasgow (2004). Before joining King’s, Mark taught at institutions including Newcastle University (2017-2021) and the University of Leicester (2015-2017). He is the co-convenor of the UACES Network of EU Africa Research (NEAR). He is a Mid Career Fellow of the British Academy (2025-2026, awarded £139,000) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Research interests

• Political Economy of Development
• Africa in the Global Economy
• Africa – Europe Relations since 1957
• EU Trade and Development Policies
• Private Sector Development

Mark’s research focuses upon African development strategies amid external donor interventions, notably those of the European Union. His research adopts a critical political economy approach to interrogate donor development discourse in relation to the material implications of free trade policies and foreign aid conditionality. His work has built upon extensive field engagement with business communities and civil society in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania to assess repercussions of Africa-EU trade and aid regimes. In the context of his study of intrusive donor interventions, Mark is interested in African liberation thought, neo-colonialism, pan-Africanism and democratic developmentalism. These interests are reflected in his recent monograph “Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of ‘Development’ in Africa” and his new book “Global Britain and Neo-Colonialism in Africa” (Palgrave).

Projects

Currently, Mark’s work is centred around three interrelated projects:

• A British Academy Mid Career Fellowship (2025-2026, awarded £139,000) examining the trade-development-migration (TDM) nexus with regards to the impact of UK and EU free trade policies in West Africa. The project adopts a decolonial perspective and focuses upon the lived experiences of business stakeholders in Ghana's rice and Nigeria's poultry sectors to explore alternative perspectives on EU free trade discourse.
• Examination of the EU’s strategic partnership with the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) in the context of the new Samoa Agreement (2023-2043). This will assess EU interventions in Africa with regards to three strategic objectives (i) free trade embodied in the EPAs, (ii) human rights and migration, and (iii) poverty reduction in conjunction with aid disbursement under the Neighbourhood, Development and International Co-operation Instrument (NDICI).
• Application of the intellectual insights of African liberation leaders and anticolonial movements to contemporary debates surrounding African sovereignties in an era of free market globalisation. This will particularly continue Mark’s focus on the work of Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of an independent Ghana

Mark is external examiner for the MA International Development at the University of Warwick. He is co-convenor of the UACES Network of EU Africa Research (NEAR) with Dr Sophia Price. He is a Mid Career Fellow of the British Academy (2025-2026). He has acted as a reviewer for a number of academic journals including Third World Quarterly, Journal of Common Market Studies, and the Journal of European Integration.

Teaching

Mark is on research leave from July 2024 until January 2026.

PhD supervision

Mark welcomes applications for PhD topics related to any of his research interests.

Latest publications

Mark Langan (2024) Global Britain and Neo-colonialism in Africa: Brexit, 'Development' and Coloniality. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-42482-3

Mark Langan (2023) The double movement in Africa: a Nkrumah-Polanyi analysis of free market fatigue in Ghana’s private sector, Review of International Political Economy, 30:2, 463-486

(2022) 'An unhealthy relationship? The reputational risks of Europe’s health focused public diplomacy in Africa', Journal of Contemporary European Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2022.2084050

(2021) 'Migration, Development and EU Free Trade Deals: The Paradox of Economic Partnership Agreements as a Push Factor for Migration', co-authored with Sophia Price, Global Affairs, 7(4), pp. 505-521. 

(2020) ‘West Africa’s Cocoa Sector and Development within Africa-EU Relations: Engaging Business Perspectives’, co-authored with Sophia Price, Third World Quarterly, 41(3), pp.487-504

(2020) ‘A New Scramble for Eurafrica? Challenges for European Development Finance and Trade Policy in the Brexit era’, Journal of Contemporary European Research, 16(2), pp.218-233

(2020) ‘Imperialisms Past and Present in EU Economic Relations with North Africa: Assessing the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements’, co-authored with Sophia Price, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 22(6), pp.703-721

(2020) ‘The EU’s Development Policy: Forging Relations of Dependence?’, co-authored with Sophia Price, in T. Diez et al (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Critical European Studies (London: Routledge), pp.499-510 

(2020) ‘Bi-Continental Encounters for Fairer ACP-EU Trade? Assessing Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives’. in R. Marchetti (Ed.) The Africa Europe Relationship: A Multi-Stakeholder Analysis (London: Routledge), pp.79-94

(2020) ‘The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: A Gendered Analysis of the Development Consequences for Africa’, co-authored with Sophia Price, in A. Kassam and L. Kassam (Eds.) Rethinking Food and Agriculture: New Ways Forward (Amsterdam: Elsevier), pp.77-91

(2020) ‘Neo-Colonialism, Nkrumah and Africa-EU ties’; in R. Rabaka (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism (London: Routledge) pp.101-112

(2020) ‘Towards a Post-Westphalian Turn in Africa-EU studies? Non State Actors and Sustainable Development’, co-authored with Sophia Price, in T. Haastrup et al (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations (London: Routledge)

(2019) ‘Africa’s Trade with Brexit Britain: Neo-Colonialism Encounters Regionalism?’, in D. Beswick, J. Fisher and S. Hurt (Eds.) Britain and Africa in the 21^st Century: Between Ambition and Pragmatism (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp.35-53

(2018) Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of ‘Development’ in Africa (New York: Palgrave Macmillan)