Who are we?

In the storm that has erupted over Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign, one conclusion that people on all sides of the controversy tend to agree upon is the deep, even desperate, need for more information about the conflict in northern Uganda. In an effort to respond to this demand, a group of scholars and activists with extensive experience in the region have come together to develop an on-line resource for those seeking to learn more about the conflict, its legacy in Uganda, and the LRA-associated violence in central Africa. It is our aim that the materials found here will contribute to the growing public debate about the conflict and help inform both citizen activism and policy decisions. Although divergent political positions and practical programs are reflected in the materials we present, all are founded upon a common commitment to the importance of critique, debate, and learning. Our hope is that this forum will evolve into a long-term source of information on the conflict and its repercussions, incorporating contributions by a growing community of researchers and activists.

Contributors

	Adam Branch, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, San Diego State University; currently Senior Research Fellow, Makerere Institute of Social Research, Kampala, Uganda. Adam studies the politics of human rights intervention and political violence in Uganda.
	Adrian Yen, PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of California-Davis. Adrian is currently conducting research in northern Uganda on psychology and postwar trauma as a technique of intervention for Western donors and pharmaceutical companies. He has also assembled a comprehensive archive of Acholi music, a collection that offers a glimpse into life in wartime northern Uganda.
	Alex De Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation, Fletcher School, Tufts University. Alex has worked and written extensively on conflict, human rights, famine and humanitarian issues in the Horn of Africa, and is an advisor on Sudan to the African Union.
	Amy C. Finnegan, Faculty, University of Minnesota-Rochester. Amy studies social movements, social change, peace/conflict, and social medicine. She has been working on issues in and related to Uganda since 2000.
	Ayesha Nibbe, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Hawai’i Pacific University. Ayesha studies how the ‘West’ engages in a relationship with the ‘Third World’ via development and humanitarianism. She is writing a book on the socio-political effects of humanitarian aid in the context of the conflict in northern Uganda.
	Chris Blattman, Assistant Professor of Political Science & Economics, Yale University. Chris uses field work and statistics to study poverty, political participation, the causes and consequences of violence, and policy in developing countries.
	Dennis Matanda, Graduate Student, Department of Political Science, Northeastern University. Dennis was, until recently, one of The Daily Monitor’s longest running columnists and hosted ‘The Hot Seat’, a political radio talk show on KFM between 2004 and 2007. Dennis is author of ‘How Gods Make Love’, a poetic repertoire published in 2009. He is now working on ‘Master of the Sagging Cheeks’, a work of political prose. He is editor of The Habari Network.
	Juliane Okot Bitek, Essayist, Writer, Poet. Juliane is the daughter of a poet father and a story-teller mother. She was born to exiled parents in Kenya, came of age in Uganda and now lives in Canada. Juliane’s work has won writing awards in Canada, the United States and Europe.
	Kristen Cheney, Senior Lecturer, Convener, Children & Youth Studies, International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands. Kristen studies children’s survival strategies amidst difficult circumstances in Eastern and Southern Africa. She is the author of ‘Pillars of the Nation: Child Citizens and Ugandan National Development’.
	Letha Victor, PhD student, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto. Letha studies how the ‘historical memory’ of gender-based and political violence is meditated through human-spirit interactions in northern Uganda.
	Mareike Schomerus, Research Consortium Director of the Justice and Security Programme, London School of Economics. Mareike works on violent conflict and why violence continues. She has followed the LRA/M conflict for many years and is the author of ” ‘A terrorist is not a person like me’: An interview with Joseph Kony.”
	Ron Atkinson, Associate Professor of History & Director of African Studies, University of South Carolina. Ron’s major focus of research and writing is the Acholi region and people. He has published ”The Origins of the Acholi of Uganda” (1999), co-wrote ”Traditional Ways of Coping in Acholi: Cultural Provisions for Reconciliation and Healing from War” (2006), and is author or co-author of many articles on Acholi history and contemporary affairs.
	Sam Dubal, MD/PhD student, Department of Anthropology, UC-Berkeley & UC-San Francisco, and Harvard Medical School. Sam studies humanitarianism, HIV/AIDS, and rationales of physical and structural violence in northern Uganda.
	Sam Lawino, Freelance journalist. Sam is an Acholi fixer and journalist affiliated with Uganda Independent Daily Monitor Publication Ltd and Wava Muno Broadcasting Television State in Kampala. He has recently reported on issues of transitional justice, politics, disease, governance, armed conflicts and business, among others, in Acholiland.
	Sandrine Perrot, Research Fellow, Sciences Po, Centre d’études et de recherches internationales (Paris, France). Sandrine is a political scientist. She has been working on the LRA and the sociology of armed groups since the end of the 1990s.  Her current research focuses on the militia phenomena in sub-Saharan Africa. She’s the co-director of ‘Research Questions’ and a member of the editorial board of Politique africaine.
	Sverker Finnström, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University. Sverker is an anthropologist who has done research on northern Uganda since 1997. He is author of ‘Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda’.
	Tim Allen, Professor in Development Anthropology, London School of Economics; Research Director of the Justice and Security Research Programme. Tim is co-editor (with Koen Vlassenroot) of ‘The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality’, and author of ‘Trial Justice: The Lord’s Resistance Army and the International Criminal Court’.

Editorial Board

	Anneeth Kaur Hundle, PhD candidate, Anthropology, University of Michigan
	Carol Jean Gallo, PhD student, Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
	Eva Namusoke-Nsubuga, PhD student, History, University of Cambridge
	Jacob Doherty, PhD student, Anthropology, Stanford University
	Kimberley Armstrong, PhD, Anthropology, McGill University
	Letha Victor, PhD student, Anthropology, University of Toronto
	Magnus Taylor, Managing Editor, African Arguments, Royal African Society
	Matthew Kustenbauder, PhD candidate, African History, Harvard University
	Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, African Center for Migration and Society
	Robert Blair, PhD candidate, Political Science, Yale University
	Tavia Nyong’o, Associate Professor, Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Staff

	Amber Ha
	Rima Abouziab

Media