James Christopher Mizes is a postdoctoral researcher working on the ANR-Access ERC project entitled "Securitizing City-Building." His research focuses on the governance of cities and financial markets in the Global South, analyzed on the basis of ethnographic studies in West Africa (Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire). In his thesis, completed at the University of California Berkeley (2019), he focused on the emergence and exercise of municipal authority in Dakar, Senegal, particularly its fiscal and financial relations with the state, investors, and urban citizens.
His current research analyzes African financial markets with a focus on financial risk knowledge. He studies how the introduction of this knowledge into these markets provokes—or circumvents—political disputes, and how it transforms the framing of certain public issues. As part of the ANR project, he aims to develop a comparative research project focused on the emergence of financial centers in cities in the Global South. He also co-organizes a collective project, "Flow/Overflow/Shortage: measuring and managing extreme urban conditions," which explores infrastructure problems such as flooding and power outages.