Padraig

CARMODY, Pádraig

PhD Geography, Professor in Geography, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland).
Socio-environmental geopolitics, economics and development; Africa.  

Pádraig Carmody is Professor in Geography at Trinity College, the University of Dublin where he did his undergraduate and masters work and Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. His Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota, and after graduation he taught at the University of Vermont. At TCD he directs the Masters in Development Practice and is a former director of CHARM-EU. His research centres on the political economy of globalisation in Africa and he has published in journals such as European Journal of Development Research, Review of African Political Economy, Economic Geography and World Development. He has also published eleven books, including The New Cold War in Africa: Global Politics and Local Agency (De Gruyter, 2026), The New Scramble for Africa (2nd ed., Polity, 2016), and as part of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers’ book series with Professors James T. Murphy, Richard Grant and Francis Owusu, The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023). He has won research grants from the United States National Science Foundation, European Commission, National Geographic and Irish Research Council, amongst others. He sits on the boards of, amongst others, Political Geography and the Journal of the Tanzanian Geographical Society and Geoforum where he was formerly editor-in-chief. He was also an associate editor of Transnational Corporations published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He is a Fellow of Trinity College and was elected to the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences in 2018, and the African Academy of Sciences in 2025. He has been chair of the Development Studies Association of Ireland and is currently co-Chair of the Global Association of Masters in Development Practice and Chair of the Standing Committee on International Affairs of the Royal Irish Academy.

Key publications


Carmody, P. (2026). The new Cold War in Africa: Global politics and local agency. De Gruyter.

Barton, B., & Carmody, P. (2026). Testbed or thoroughfare? Africa's place in China's evolving grand strategy. Journal of Contemporary China, 35(157), 1170–1182. https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2025.2489488

Carmody, P. & Murphy, J. (Eds.). (2024). The handbook of African economic development. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Carmody, P., Taylor, I., & Zajontz, T. (2022). China's "spatial fix" and "debt diplomacy" in Africa. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 56(1), 57–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2020.1868014

Carmody, P., & Owusu, F. (2007). Competing hegemons? Chinese versus American geo-economic strategies in Africa. Political Geography, 26(5), 504–524. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2007.03.005

 

Complete list of publications


Trinity Research (The University of Dublin)