Faculty

Office Location

SS 2005

Phone Number

416-978-3453

Email Address

a.handley@utoronto.ca

Area Group(s)

  • Comparative Politics
  • Development Studies
  • Public Policy
  • International Relations

Education

  • MESc, University Natal, South Africa
  • M.Phil., University of Oxford
  • Ph.D., Princeton University

Antoinette Handley

Professor
Acting Dean, Faculty of Arts & Science

Biography

South African born, Professor Antoinette Handley’s research interests regularly lead her back to the subcontinent for her research on state-business relations and the nature of Africa’s capitalist class. Her first book on this subject ‘Business and the State in Africa: Economic Policymaking in the Neo-liberal Era’ was published by Cambridge University Press in 2008. Her second book ‘Business and Social Crisis in Africa’ (CUP, 2020), considers how African economic elites respond to key moments of social and political crisis. She is the principal investigator of the Elite Africa Project, which aims to redefine the notion of power in Africa and shift public perceptions of the continent’s most prominent citizens.

She joined the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science in 2003 and was awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2008. She was appointed Full Professor in 2021. She also served as Chair and Graduate Chair of the department from 2017–2021.

Professor Handley earned her undergraduate degree at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa and read for her MPhil in International Relations at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. She then earned her PhD in political science at Princeton University in 2003.

Prior to entering academia, she served as the Latin America Research Fellow and then Director of Studies and Deputy National Director at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Research Interests

  • African Politics: esp. Southern Africa
  • Political Economy of Epidemics: HIV/AIDS
  • Comparative Development
  • Political Economy of Reform in Developing Countries
  • Business-Government Relations
  • Business as a political actor

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Recent Publications