CAPERS.

CAPERS - the Comparative African Political Economy Research Seminar - is a joint NYU-Columbia Working Group for scholars of African political economy and development. It takes place once a semester, a maximum of twenty people attend, and working papers are 'presented'. That is, because people read all the papers in advance, the hour that is booked for each paper is spend completely on discussion. A total of six paper are discussed, there is lunch in between and dinner afterwards. Of those six papers 3 are from faculty and 3 are from students, each faculty paper has a student from the other university as discussant, and vice versa for a student paper.

Last Friday the 3rd CAPERS took place; this time at NYU (last time was at Columbia). As always faculty to student ratios were high (around 1 to 3), and because everybody was well-prepared and we know each other by now and thus we feel free to say what we think the discussions were great. Great to be in in a room with smart people discussing African political economy and development issues!