For our final session, we will be having a book salon. This event will be held on Friday, 20 June 2025 (3:00-4:30pm CEST) in Room 0.16, BG1 Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012XT, Amsterdam. All speakers will attend in person.  Drinks and snacks will be available afterwards.

Registration is not required. But online attendance will be possible for this session. Please use the above poster’s QR code or this Zoom link:  https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/85202106220

The authors will be Andrea Pollio and Maria Repnikova.

Dr. Andrea Pollio will give a talk on his book Silicon Elsewhere: Nairobi, Global China and the Promise of Techno-capital. He is an Assistant Professor of Economic and Political Geography at the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, and a research associate of the African Centre for Cities at University of Cape Town, South Africa.  He is also a former Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at both institutions, one of the founding editors of Platforms & Society, and a co-curator of UTA-Do - Urban Theory Workshop-Africa.

Dr. Maria Repnikova will give a talk on her book China’s Image-Making in Africa: Competing for Soft Power in the Shadows of the West. She is an expert on China, an Associate Professor in Global Communication, and the inaugural William C. Pate Chair in Strategic Communication at Georgia State University. She is the author of the award-winning book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism (Cambridge 2017), as well as the recent, Chinese Soft Power (Cambridge Global China Element Series). Other than working on China, Maria Repnikova does comparative work on information politics in China and Russia.

Moderated by Dr. Carywn Morris ( SOAS University of London).

We cordially invite everyone to join this academic and networking event. See you all there!