This introductory chapter outlines the book’s research approach to studying the African Union Border Programme (AUBP) and the African Union’s (AU) external partnerships. It proposes an inductive and empirically grounded perspective to studying the inner workings of this key programme that forms part of the AU’s evolving peace and security agenda. Drawing from anthropological and sociological approaches to studying international organisations (IOs) and regional organisations (RO) as well as recent empirical work on the AU, it presents its theoretical framework, methods and sources, including insider interviews. Notably, the chapter also includes reflections on the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa as “field” work site as well as the author’s positionality, addressing methodological, practical and ethical questions related to researching the AU and North-South institutional partnerships as a white European (and female) researcher.