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Dr Elsje Fourie (E.E.)

 

As a sociologist of globalisation, I am broadly interested in how social, cultural, and economic processes move across borders, and how these global connections shape everyday life, shared ways of thinking, and patterns of inequality.

 

This has led to a longstanding interest in how industrialising societies in Africa selectively make use of ideas about modernity seen as originating from East Asia. Specifically, this has led me to study the use of Japanese productivity methods in Ethiopian factories and the influence of a putative "Chinese model" of development on the development goals of African elites.

 

Most recently, I have become interested in applying this lens to understand how globally-successful novels shape readers' social imaginaries and literary attachments. My recently-concluded NWO-funded project, "Global Novels, Global Readers? Imagining transnational communities along the circuits of global literary consumption" explored how book clubs around the world read and respond to globally "successful" novels. My findings will appear as a monograph with Palgrave in late 2026. 

Expertises

Research:

  • The sociology of global literature
  • The sociology of reading around the world
  • The politics of global knowledge and cultural production (particularly is this relates to societies in the global South)
  • Development theory (with a focus on theories of modernity and modernisation)
  • The political economy of industrialisation in Ethiopia and (historically) East Asia
  • Social upgrading in global value chains
  • Qualitative interviewing
  • Qualitative case studies
  • Focus groups as research method

Teaching:

  • FASoS assessment policy (including the use of GenAI)
  • postgraduate supervision
  • curriculum development
  • the use of games and creative writing in problem-based learning 

Other:

  • Creative writing (creative non-fiction and fiction) inside and outside academic settings. I have been a columnist for The Observant and the co-editor of The Stories We Tell, an anthology of creative writing by FASoS researchers.
  • Communicating with a policy audience (blogs, briefings, podcasts, newspaper articles)

 

 

Career history
  • Recipient of NWO XS Grant ("Global Novels, Global Readers? Imagining transnational communities along the circuits of global literary consumption’) (2024-2025)
  • Researcher on the NWO-funded Wellbeing, Women and Work in Ethiopia (3WE) research project (2019-2023).
  • Fellow of the Japan Foundation (2019)
  • PhD (with Distinction) in 2013 at the School of International Studies in the University of Trento (Italy).
  • MA (with Distinction) in Peace Studies (2004) and an MPhil in Conflict Resolution (2005) from the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford (UK).  Both were completed thanks to the generous help of a Rotary World Peace Fellowship.
  • BA Hons in international Relations (2002) and a BA (with Distinction) in Political Science (2001) from the University of Pretoria (South Africa).
  • I have been a visiting researcher at the Universities of Kent, Bath, Addis Ababa and Nairobi, as well the Graduate Institute of Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo.