Join us for a talk with Dr Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. His research interests include African politics (particularly West and Central Africa), comparative politics and international political economy, especially in the fields of natural resource extraction, organised crime, state decay and post-conflict reconstruction. Most recently, Soares de Oliveira has focused on the issue of oil and governance in the Gulf of Guinea, where he has conducted extensive fieldwork. He is the author of Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea (Columbia University Press, 2007), a co-editor of China Returns to Africa: A Rising Power and a Continent Embrace (with Daniel Large and Christopher Alden, (Columbia UP, 2008) and a contributing author to Bottom of the Barrel: Africa’s Oil Boom and the Poor (Catholic Relief Services, 2003). His recent individual and collaborative work has received the support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the China Universities’ Committee.