Boko Haram – An Annotated Bibliography

While writing a paper entitled “The Geopolitics of Boko Haram and Nigeria’s ‘War on Terror’“, between 2012 and 2014, I produced a detailed bibliography of academic writings on the group. Boko Haram have been in the news recently because of the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls, but they have been active since at least 2009, with older roots. Between 2011 and 2013 I visited Nigeria four times as Susan Elden was working in the country. The first visit was to Kano and Abuja; the others to Abuja and surrounding areas, with one side trip to Ibadan.

You can download the bibliography here (pdf). It was first created on 14 February 2013 and last updated 25 June 2014. Thank you to those who have sent me pieces or links – I’d welcome corrections and further suggestions. I hope people find this useful. If you link to it, please link to this page, and not direct to the pdf – that way people can access the most recent version.

The bibliography does not include newspaper or online news stories, though in the first section, and below, I list blogs and websites that have a fair bit of relevant content. I’ve included links wherever possible, and indicated if pieces are open access or require subscription – please let me know if links are broken or the status of a piece is wrong or has changed. Articles listed without comments are often of limited use – there are some journals listed here with fairly low editorial standards.

For those new to the topic, I’d suggest that Davis 2012, Mantzikos ed. 2013, Pham 2012 and Walker 2012 are the best places to start (all open access), perhaps followed by one of the Adesoji pieces (2010 [open access], 2011), articles in Busher ed. 2014 (open access), Elkaim 2012 (open access), Oyeniyi 2014 and something by Agbiboa (maybe 2013d [open access] or 2014). If you only read one (fairly long) piece, I’d suggest International Crisis Group 2014 (open access).

Robertson 2012 is a disturbing indication of possible U.S.-led interventions; Marlatt 2014 provides another useful bibliography (both open access).

Blogs and Websites with Nigeria-related content:

Africa in Transition – http://blogs.cfr.org/campbell/

Africa is a Country – http://africasacountry.com

African Arguments – http://africanarguments.org

African Futures – http://forums.ssrc.org/african-futures/

Conflict, Security & Development Group – http://www.securityanddevelopment.org

E-International Relations – http://www.e-ir.info

Informed Comment (Juan Cole’s blog) – http://www.juancole.com/

International Crisis Group – http://www.crisisgroup.org

Nigeria Research Network – http://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/research/research-networks/nrn

Oxford Research Group – http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk

The Jamestown Foundation – http://www.jamestown.org