Allison Drew

Professor Allison Drew is a faculty member in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of York. She holds a BA in Economics from New York University, and MAs in African Area Studies and Political Science, alongside a PhD in Political Science from UCLA. Her research focuses on 20th-century and contemporary Africa, particularly the interplay between African states, social movements, and development dynamics. Notable projects include studies on South Africa's democracy movement and a biography of South African Communist Sidney Bunting exploring liberal-communist ideological intersections. Her current work, Visions of Liberation: Communism and Nationalism in Algeria and South Africa, compares liberation movements' transitions to armed struggle. Funded by the British Academy and AHRC, her research bridges national and global political contexts.

External roles include advising the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, assessing grants for Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and serving on the Yorkshire African Studies Network. She has held visiting positions at institutions such as the University of Cape Town and Magdalen College, Oxford.

Her expertise spans postcolonial state dynamics, socialism vs. nationalism, and transnational activism, with a focus on Algeria and South Africa’s liberation trajectories.