People

Robtel Neajai Pailey| Assistant Professor

Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey is Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy. She centres her research on how structural transformation is conceived and contested by local, national and transnational actors from ‘crisis’-affected regions of the so-called Global South.

Research interests: development, citizenship, migration, conflict, governance, race
Regions of focus: Liberia, Sierra Leone

Email: r.n.pailey@lse.ac.uk

Claire Mercer | Professor

Professor Claire Mercer is a human geographer working at the intersection of human geography and African studies. Her work has developed a critique of the NGO-ization of development and postcolonial approaches to civil society.

Research interests: class, suburbs, architecture, civil society, diaspora
Region of focus: Tanzania

Email: c.c.mercer@lse.ac.uk

Catherine Boone | Professor

Professor Catherine Boone is Programme Director in African Development at the LSE Department of International Development. Her work focusses on commercial land tenure policies in West Africa.

Research interests: political economy, political development, property rights, land
Regions: Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire

Email: c.boone@lse.ac.uk
X: @cboone2023

Laura Mann | Assistant Professor

Dr Laura Mann is an Assistant Professor in the LSE Department of International Development and focusses on the political economy of African development, communication technologies and data in East Africa.

Research interests: political economy, knowledge production, communication technologies and data
Region of focus: Kenya

Email: L.E.Mann@lse.ac.uk

Wendy Willems | Associate Professor

Dr Wendy Willems is Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, where she also serves as Programme Director for the MSc Global Media and Communications.

Research interests: global digital culture, postcolonial approaches
Region of focus:Africa

Email: w.willems@lse.ac.uk

Katrin Flikschuh | Professor

Professor Katrin Flikschuh's work explores connections between African and Western social and political thought. She is Principal Investigator of a Leverhulme Trust International Networks Project.

Research interests: political philosophy, political thought, modern African philosophy
Region of focus: West Africa

Email: k.a.flikschuh@lse.ac.uk

Lucy Kanya| Assistant Professor

Dr Lucy Kanya has a health economics and policy background with experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has in the past worked on the evaluation of health financing programmes in Kenya and Uganda.

Research interests: health care financing, maternal and child health
Regions of focus: Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Senegal

Email: L.Kanya@lse.ac.uk

Declan Conway | Professional Research Fellow

Dr Declan’s research cuts across water, climate and society, with a strong focus on adaptation and the water-energy-food nexus. He has over 20 years of experience working in the UK/Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Research interests: water security, climate change
Regions of focus: Kenya, Zambia, Botswana

Email: d.conway@lse.ac.uk

Deborah James | Professor

Professor Deborah is a specialist in the anthropology of South and Southern Africa. Her work is broadly political and economic in focus. She is a Faculty Associate in the LSE International Inequalities Institute.

Research interests: ethnography of advice, aspiration and indebtedness
Region of focus: South Africa

Email: d.a.james@lse.ac.uk

Leigh Gardner | Associate Professor

Dr Leigh's work focuses on the economic and financial history of sub-Saharan Africa during 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis on Africa’s global connnections. Her work focuses on the relationship between African countries and international financial and monetary systems.

Research interests: economic development, monetary policy, public finance
Region of focus: Liberia

Email: l.a.gardner@lse.ac.uk

Joanna Lewis| Associate Professor

Dr Joanna is a historian of Britain in Africa and Africa in Britain, covering the precolonial to the contemporary time periods. Currently she is researching the history of Somali women who fled conflict in the 1990s and settled in London.

Research interests: migration, refugees, modern African history
Region of focus: Somalia

Email: j.e.lewis1@lse.ac.uk

Chaloka Beyani| Associate Professor

Dr Chaloka Beyani is an Associate Professor of International Law at LSE Law School, a member of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and Chair of its Advisory Board, and a member of the Centre for Climate Change at LSE.

Research interests: International law, human rights, treaty & constitution making, peace making
Region of focus: Africa

Email:c.beyani@lse.ac.uk

Jo Beall| Professor

Professor Jo Beall is an Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Research Fellow at the LSE. She has conducted research in Africa and Asia on urban development and governance as well as cities in situations of conflict and state fragility.

Research interests: urban policy, sustainability, Asia, Africa, cultural engagement
Region of focus: South Africa

Email: j.beall@lse.ac.uk

George Ofosu| Assistant Professor

Dr George K. Ofosu received his PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2017. His research focuses on political accountability, election integrity, legislator behaviour, and the quality of democracy.

Research interests: comparative politics, elections, political accountability, African politics
Region of focus: Sub-Saharan Africa

Email: g.ofosu@lse.ac.uk

Laura Bear| Head of Department of Anthropology

Professor Laura Bear specialises in the anthropology of the economy, infrastructures and time. Bear has assumed positions as a board member in the Economy and Society editorial collective, the LSE International Inequalities Institute and ESRC Rebuilding Macroeconomics Research Network.

Research interests: anthropologies of the economy, state, infrastructures, time
Regions: South Asia

Email: l.bear@lse.ac.ukX: @BearLauraLSE

Teddy Brett| CPAID Consultant

Professor Teddy Brett has been involved in research, teaching and practice in development since the 1960s and joined the LSE Development Studies Institute in 1993. He is currently a consultant for the LSE Centre for Public Authority and International Development at the FLIA.

Research interests: political economy, institutional reform, reconstruction
Regions of focus: Uganda, Zimbabwe

Email: e.a.brett@lse.ac.uk

Dr Simidele Dosekun| Assistant Professor

Dr Simidele Dosekun is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE.

Dr Dosekun's research centres African women to explore questions of gender, race, subjectivity, and power in a global context. She is the author of Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture, and co-editor of African Luxury: Aesthetics and Politics. Her work has appeared in the journals Feminist Media Studies, Feminism and Psychology, Qualitative Inquiry, and Feminist Africa, among others.

Research interests: political economy, institutional reform, reconstruction

Email: S.O.Dosekun@lse.ac.uk

Tom Kirk| Research Fellow

Dr Thomas Kirk is a researcher and consultant based at LSE. His research interests include the provision of security and justice in conflict-affected regions, exploring how power works from top to bottom in ongoing development programmes.

Research interests: security, authoritaniasm, power, water governance
Region of focus: DRC

Email: t.kirk@lse.ac.uk

Colette van der Ven Visting Fellow and Research Consultant

Colette is an international trade lawyer and policy expert specialized in sustainable development. As founder and director of TULIP Consulting, a boutique Geneva-based consultancy, Colette advises the public sector on legal and policy issues at the trade, environment, and development nexus. She is also a visiting lecturer in international law at the Graduate Institute, where she teaches the TradeLab International Economic Law Clinic. Previously, Colette worked as an international trade lawyer at Sidley Austin’s international dispute settlement practice, representing governments in their disputes at the World Trade Organization. Colette holds a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and is a member of the New York Bar.

Research interest: international trade and sustainable development

Region of focus: Africa, Asia

Email: cvanderven@tulipconsulting.ch X: @ColettevdVen

Oluwasola Omoju Research Consultant

Oluwasola Omoju is an Economist and Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), where he provides research and technical support to the Nigerian parliament.

Research interests: energy and climate policy, public financial management, Africa trade policy, macroeconomic modeling and applied development economics
Region of focus: Africa

Email: shollcy@yahoo.co.uk

Julian Hopwood Research Fellow

Dr Julian Hopwood has lived in Gulu, northern Uganda for much of the time since 2006, where his work for CPAID is mainly focused, and where he teaches on the Medical Anthropology programme at Gulu University. He recently completed his PhD at Ghent University on land ownership in Acholi, following earlier careers in community mental health in UK and humanitarian-development work in Uganda.

Research interests: ‘Customary’ communal land; environmental, state and community-level justice issues; mental health and resilience.

Region of focus: Northern Uganda, South Sudan

Email: j.hopwood@lse.ac.uk

Claire Elder Research Fellow

Dr Claire Elder completed her DPhil in Politics at Oxford University after working for the International Crisis Group and years of experience in north-eastern Africa. Her research focuses on public authority and the political economy of state-building in weak states.

Research interests: political economy, diaspora, statebuilding, weak states
Region of focus: Somalia

Email: c.m.elder@lse.ac.uk
X: @celder_m

Charlotte Brown Research Officer

Charlotte Brown is a Research Officer, FLIA. Her doctoral research focused on the fractured mobilities resulting from humanitarian policies in Uganda.

Research interests: Humanitarianism, mobilities, gender

Region of focus: Uganda and South Sudan

X: @C_L_V_B

Professor Richard Fardon Visiting Professor

Professor Richard Fardon is a social anthropologist specializing in West Africa, particularly Nigeria and Cameroon, where he began fieldwork in the second half of the 1970s. He is author or editor, often collaboratively, of over two dozen books and fifty plus essays and articles. He taught at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and SOAS University of London, where he is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and was at various times Chair of the Centre of African Studies, University of London, and founding Head of the SOAS Doctoral School. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2004.

Research interests: social anthropology

Region of focus: West Africa, Nigeria and Cameroon

Professor Alcinda Honwana Visiting Professor

Alcinda Honwana is former Strategic Director at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa and Centennial Professor at the LSE Department of International Development. She is also Visiting Professor of Anthropology and International Development at the Open University and a UN adviser.

Research interests: youth movements, youth activism, social networks, datafication
Region of focus: North Africa, Mozambique

Email: A.M.Honwana@lse.ac.uk

Professor Tony Barnett Visiting Professor

Tony Barnett is an interdisciplinary social scientist based at the Royal Veterinary College where he is Professor of Social Sciences. He is currently co-investigator on the One Heath Poultry Hub, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund.

Research interests: zoonotic diseases, qualitative data, infectious disease models
Region of focus: Uganda, South Africa

Email: abarnett@rvc.ac.uk

Professor Gibril Faal Visiting Professor in Practice

Prof. Gibril Faal is a multi-disciplinary business and development executive. He is the co-founder and director of GK Partners, specialising in socially responsible business models, sustainable development and programme implementation.

Research interests: development, migration and diaspora
Region of focus: Africa, Europe

Contact: LinkedIn

Dr Piroska Nagy Mohácsi Visiting Professor in Practice

Piroska Nagy Mohácsi is an Academic Partner of Macroeconomic Advisory Group (MAG), New York. Previously Piroska was Interim Director and Programme Director of the LSE Institute for Global Affairs (2015-2021) leading the institute and its academic programme.

Research interests: monetary and fiscal policy, financial resilience, digital currencies
Region of focus: Europe

Email: P.Nagy-Mohacsi@lse.ac.uk

Melissa Parker Visting Professor

Melissa Parker is a member of the Department of Global Health and Development and a Visiting Professor at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. She specialises in the anthropology of global health and medical humanitarianism.

Email: melissa.parker@lshtm.ac.uk

Chude Jideonwo Creative in Residence

Tagged ‘the golden boy of African media’, Chude Jideonwo is a media entrepreneur whose 25-year career spans advertising, public relations, television, radio, print, and digital media.

As co-founder and CEO of RED | For Africa, he crafted and led strategies that fueled social movements and shaped national elections across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. Under his leadership, RED was honored as African Business of the Year alongside Dangote Group and Chandaria Industries.

Dr Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin II Creative in Residence

Dr Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin II is a documentary filmmaker and media creative whose work interrogates culture, identity, power, and social justice. A PhD graduate in Creative and Critical Practice from the University of Sussex, his acclaimed films and photo exhibitions have featured globally, inspiring dialogue on African agency, ethical storytelling, and impactful advocacy through photography and film.

Research interests: media practice, representation, African development, humanitarian organisations, charities, media advocacy
Region of focus: Africa, Global South

LinkedIn: Dr Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin II

Ian Mangenga Creative in Residence

Ian Mangenga is a social designer and AI ethics & governance researcher whose work explores how algorithmic systems quietly shape identity, access, and power, with a particular focus on the experiences of African women. She is the founder of Digital Girl Africa, a community incubator advancing AI literacy and digital confidence for women across the continent.

She is currently completing an MA in AI, Ethics & Society at Birkbeck, University of London.

LinkedIn: Ian Mangenga

Ama Ofeibea Tetteh Creative in Residence

Ama Ofeibea Tetteh is the founder and lead consultant at Chapter54. With a background in Graphics & Communications, Research and Programme Management and academic qualifications from Central St. Martins, Goldsmiths College and SOAS, her career portfolio is driven by a passion to harness the Arts and Creative sector to create opportunities and contribute to new narratives about the Continent.

Having worked within the Creative and Cultural Industries for over two decades, her professional offering centres on a deep understanding of cultural nuance and appreciation for the artistic as well as the operational.

LinkedIn: Ama Ofeibea Tetteh

Dr Teferi Mergo Visiting Senior Fellow

Teferi Mergo is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo (UW), with appointments at United College, the Economics department and the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development. He is a Research Fellow at Global Labour Organization and has been recognised for research excellence at UW.

Research interests: development economics, political economy, and demographic economics

Region of focus: Sub-Saharan Africa

Dr Rachel Ibreck Visiting Senior Fellow

Dr Rachel Ibreck is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa and Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, one of the British International Research Institutes with a research centre in Nairobi, promoting research in the humanities and social sciences across the region.

Research Interests: politics, civil society, human rights, justice, conflict and genocide

Region of Focus: East Africa

Dr Hany Besada Visiting Senior Fellow

Dr Hany Besada is a Visiting Senior Fellow at FLIA. He is also a Non-Executive Director, MAFCO Capital and Executive Director, Institute for Natural Resources and Sustainable Development; Senior Research Fellow, United Nations University-Institute for Natural Resources in Africa; and Senior Fellow, Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, University of Toronto.

Research Interests: Natural Resource Governance/Management, Sustainable Development, Digital Economy and Technologies for Sustainable Development, Trade and Investment Promotion & Facilitation, Climate Change and Environment Sustainability, South-South Cooperation, Peacebuilding and Economic Reconstruction

Region of Focus: Africa, Middle East, Global South, BRICS

Dr Desné Masie Visiting Senior Fellow

Dr Desné Masie is an economist and journalist, and has held several senior roles in media, academia and financial services in the UK and South Africa. Dr Masie has advised governments and major multinational corporations on geopolitical risk, economic policy, sustainable finance and wider financial sector policy. She has been awarded a Pulitzer Grant for her work on carbon markets, and is an accomplished public speaker and author.

Research interests: geopolitics, economics, international finance, carbon markets, nature markets, news media, public affairs

Region of focus: SADC, Nigeria, Kenya, UK, EU, BRICS, Africa in the international political economy

Louise Arimatsu Visiting Senior Fellow

Dr Louise Arimatsu is Distinguished Policy Fellow in the Centre for Women, Peace and Security, where she works on the AHRC project 'A Feminist International Law of Peace and Security' and the ERC project 'Gendered Peace'. Her current research projects include 'A Feminist Foreign Policy' and 'Women and Weapons'.

Research interests: International Human Rights Law

Email: l.arimatsu@lse.ac.uk

Dr Souad Mohamed Visiting Senior Fellow

Dr Souad Mohamed is an experienced CEO, consultant, and academic specializing in UK higher education and learning development. With a successful record in global partnership development, she currently leads the Women in Local Governance program in Saudi Arabia, while serving as CEO at IEL International. She has driven impactful women leadership projects, advocating for policy reforms and women's participation.

Research interests: gender-responsive policies, strategic partnership development, women leadership development and youth development

Region of focus: Middle East & Northeast Africa

Email: s.mohamed7@lse.ac.uk
X: @DRSouadmohamed

Vanessa Iwowo Visiting Senior Fellow

Dr Vanessa Iwowo is Lecturer in Organisational Psychology. She is an award-winning management scholar whose research focuses on ways of enhancing leadership development in international contexts.

Research interests: management, leadership development, organisational psychology,
Region of focus: Africa

Email: v.iwowo@bbk.ac.uk
X: @DrVanessaIwowo

Anna Macdonald Visiting Senior Fellow

Dr Anna Macdonald works at the LSE Centre for Public Authority and International Development and the Conflict Research Programme, where she researches ideas of public authority and legal pluralism in the Horn of Africa.

Research interests: law, justice, statehood and social order
Region of focus: Uganda

Email: A.Macdonald1@lse.ac.uk

Shirley Yu Visiting Senior Fellow

Dr Shirley Ze Yu is a leading voice on China’s political economy, an Asia Fellow with the Ash Center of Harvard Kennedy School, an adjunct professor with the IE Business School and a member of the Davos Expert Network on 5G, geopolitics and geoeconomics

Research interests: political economy, business, trade
Region of focus: China, Africa

Email: s.yu19@lse.ac.uk
X: @shirleyzeyu

Gedion Onyango Visiting Senior Fellow

Gedion Onyango is a researcher and scholar in Public Policy and Governance in African countries. He was a Co-PI for the Centre for Public Authority and International Development and the Co-National Investigator for Kenya at Afrobarometer.

Email: g.onyango@lse.ac.uk

Elizabeth Ngutuku Visiting Senior Fellow

Eliza has over 20 years of experience, working on multidisciplinary issues related to children and youth development in eastern Africa. The issues she focuses on include child poverty and vulnerability, education for marginalised children and youth, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Email: e.m.ngutuku@lse.ac.uk

Dr Tessa Laing Visiting Fellow

Tessa is a community organiser and scholar who has worked alongside activists and communities in northern Uganda since 2013 in struggles for social and environmental change. Her work has included supporting successful campaigns to pass and enforce alcohol legislation and to resist forced land evictions. She is currently the Peace & Justice Coordinator of the Anglican Diocese of Northern Uganda, leading a team focused on building a community-driven peace process to transform a large-scale land conflict.

Research interests: The politics of land, history of land tenure, public authority, resistance and peasant political action, natural resources, peace-building.

Region of focus: Northern Uganda and East Africa

Anne-Line Rodriguez Visiting Fellow

Dr Anne-Line Rodriguez is an anthropologist specialising in the ethnographic study of local interactions with the global mobility regime in West and North Africa.

Research interests: governance of migration; social becoming; economic inclusion; care.

Region of focus: Senegal; West and North Africa.

Email: a.rodriguez3@lse.ac.uk

Iliana Sarafian Research Fellow

Dr Iliana Sarafian is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Public Authority and International Development at FLIA, LSE. Iliana’s research is in the fields of minority health and wellbeing, gender, ethnicity, and social inequalities in European contexts.

Research interests: Resilience, gender, social inequality, ethnicity, European Roma populations.

Region of focus: UK, Poland, Italy, Bulgaria.

Email: I.Sarafian@lse.ac.uk

William Davis Visiting Fellow

Will is an economist who has worked with organizations across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. During most of his career he has focused on Africa, covering trade, fiscal and industrial policies as well as illicit financial flows. He is currently an independent consultant supporting a range of organizations on the economics of Africa, including the continent's food trade, opportunities for economic development linked to green minerals, illicit financial flows, and domestic resource mobilisation, fiscal policies for the mining sector, emissions taxes and voluntary carbon markets. He is an invited participant in the United Nations sub-committee on Extractive Industries Taxation and the technical advisory board of the Global Mining Tax Initiative.

Research interests:international trade, industrial policies, illicit financial flows, taxation

Region of focus:Africa with in-depth work on Senegal and Zambia

Francesca Beausang Visiting Fellow

Francesca has experience in both the academic and corporate worlds. She left academia in 2004 to become a macroeconomist in finance, covering emerging markets. She has since moved into philanthropy as Global Director of Communications and Partnerships at Pharo Foundation, where she combines her private sector experience with her commitment to Africa’s economic and social development.

Research interests: philanthropy, economic development, education, international finance, news media
Region of focus: East Africa

Kara Blackmore Visiting Fellow

Kara Blackmore is an anthropologist, curator and writer working at the intersection of arts, culture and social repair after conflict. For more than a decade she worked with NGOs, governments, corporate entities, cultural institutions and local communities across East and Southern Africa.

Research interests: post-conflict reconstruction, arts, curation, local governance
Region of focus: Uganda

Email: K.A.Blackmore@lse.ac.uk

Naomi Pendle Visiting fellow

Dr Naomi Pendle has carried out ethnographic and qualitative research in South Sudan since 2009, with a particular focus on Nuer and Dinka communities. Naomi has advised the UK and US governments and researched for the ICRC.

Research interests: public authority, patterns of violence, local governance, political marketplace
Region of focus: South Sudan

Email: n.r.pendle@lse.ac.uk

Paroma Bhattacharya Visiting Fellow

Dr. Paroma Bhattacharya is the Head of Social Innovation at LSE Generate. She leads Research and Programme Delivery in the domain of Social Innovation for LSE Generate, the Entrepreneurship Hub at the LSE (part of the LSE Research and Innovation Division). She is also a visiting fellow at FLIA, the LSE Department of Management and the LSE Social Innovation Lab.

Research interests: humanitarianism, anthropology, global health
Region of focus: Africa, Southeast Asia

Email: P.Bhattacharya@lse.ac.uk
X: @Paroma

Ponsiano Bimeny Visiting Fellow

Dr Ponsiano Bimeny specialises in state formation from the perspective of violence, conflict and displacement with a focus on South Sudan and northern Uganda. He has previously worked for more than six years as a development professional in northern Uganda, where he grew up.

Research interests:development, humanitarian development, violence, conflict
Region of focus: South Sudan

Uche Igwe Visiting Fellow

Dr Uche Igwe is a political economy analyst, legislative scholar and communications expert with twenty years of practical experience working with parliament, government agencies, local and international NGOs, the media, research think tanks and the private sector.

Research interests: legislative ethics, anti-corruption, open government partnerships
Region of focus: Nigeria

Email: u.igwe@lse.ac.uk
X: @uche_igwe

Esther Marijnen Visiting Fellow

Dr Esther is a political ecologist working on nature-society relations in areas of armed conflict. She studies specifically the militarisation of nature conservation, processes of environmental change in violent environments and the intersection between geography, authority and war.

Research interests: conservation, environment, conflict, war, violence
Region of focus:Central Africa, DRC

Email: esther.marijnen@wur.nl
X: @Esthermarijnen

Maria del Pilar Lopez-Uribe Visiting Fellow

Dr Maria works at the intersection of Development Economics, Economic History and Political Economy, interested land, conflict, gender and social movements. She is Assistant Professor in at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.

Research interests:development economics, political economy, applied microeconomics
Region of focus:Latin America

Email: m.d.lopez-uribe@lse.ac.uk
Contact:LinkedIn

Cristin Alexis Fergus Visiting Fellow

Cristin Alexis Fergus is Lead Investigator for the LEAD Project and PhD researcher in the LSE Department of International Development, where she examines aspects of evidence for decision-making within global health.

Research interests:public health, global health interventions
Region of focus: Uganda

Email: c.fergus@lse.ac.uk
X: @FergusCristin

Nikita Simpson Visiting Fellow

Nikita is a Lecturer in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. She researches, develops interventions, and provides policy advisory on mental health and inequality in India, Southern Africa, and the UK. Prior to joining SOAS, Nikita was a postdoc at the LSE, where she founded the Covid and Care Research Group.

Research interests: India, South Asia, UK, Southern Africa, Mental health, HIV, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Digital health, Feminist anthropology, Covid-19 pandemic policy
Region of focus: UK, India, Southern Africa

Email: n.simpson@lse.ac.uk
X: @NiksSimpson

Liz Storer Visiting Fellow

Elizabeth Storer is currently a Lecturer in Health Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. She was previously a Research Fellow at FLIA (21-23) and continues to hold a Visiting Fellowship at the Institute. Elizabeth’s research, which has been funded by AHRC, ESRC and the British Academy, uses ethnographic methods to trace the connections between borders/ bordering mechanisms and health outcomes. She maintains active research connections to people and institutions in the West Nile sub-region of Uganda, but also conducts research in the UK context.

Research interests: health

Region of focus: Uganda and UK

Email: e.storer@lse.ac.ukX: @lizziestorer

Ryan Joseph O’Byrne Visiting Fellow

Dr Ryan O’Byrne researches the migration experiences of South Sudanese in Uganda and the international diaspora. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from University College London based on ethnographic fieldwork in South Sudan.

Research interests: migration, displacement, resilience, public authority
Region of focus: Uganda, South Sudan

Email: r.obyrne@lse.ac.uk

Jonah Lipton Visiting Fellow

Dr Jonah Lipton is an anthropologist at LSE where he attained his PhD examining family life, work and coming of age among young men in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Jonah gained a BA in Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

Research interests: political economy, urban neighbourhood life, crisis and humanitarianism
Region of focus: Sierra Leone

Email: j.h.lipton@lse.ac.uk
X: @Jonah_Lipton

Dr Sophie Nakueira Visiting Fellow

Sophie Nakueira holds a PhD in Public Law and an LLM in Commercial Law, from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research lies at the intersection of law, criminology, and anthropology.

Research Focus: The governance of emerging threats: Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Tech impacts; cross-border mobility due to environmental impacts, the governance of vulnerable populations, governance in humanitarian contexts

Regional Focus: East Africa: Uganda and Tanzania and South Africa

Alice Robinson Visiting Fellow

Alice Robinson is a PhD student at the Department of International Development at LSE. Her doctoral research focuses on the histories and everyday practices of local NGOs in South Sudan and their role in humanitarian response.

Research interests: humanitarianism, NGOs, anthropology

Region of focus: South Sudan

Email: A.M.Robinson@lse.ac.uk

X: @alice_miranda1

Ronak Gopaldas Visiting Fellow

Ronak Gopaldas is a political economist, "pracademic," writer, and speaker whose work focuses on the intersection of (geo)politics, economics, and business in Africa.

He is a Director at Signal Risk, a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and faculty at GIBS Business School in South Africa.

https://www.ronakgopaldas.com/

Costanza Torre Visiting Fellow

Costanza Torre is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE’s Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa and a Research Fellow at the Anthropology and Sociology Department at SOAS, in the Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action.

Research interests: post-conflict reconstruction, mental health interventions
Region of focus: Uganda

Email: c.torre@lse.ac.ukX: @costi_torre

Jess Crombie Visiting Fellow

Jess Crombie is thought leader and innovator in the field of ethical storytelling, with over twenty-five years' experience creating some of the most innovative and award-winning content in the humanitarian sector.

Email: jess@jesscrombie.com

Dr Sipke Shaughnessy Visiting Fellow

Dr Sipke Shaughnessy works on responsible investing at British International Investment (BII), the UK’s bilateral development finance institution, directly supporting investments on risk, impact, and sustainability across frontier and fragile markets, with a particular focus on Africa.

Research interests: informal and grey economies, development finance

Region of focus: East and Central Africa

Flora McCrone Visiting Fellow

Flora McCrone is a political anthropologist and conflict specialist focusing on the Horn of Africa. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. Flora has worked as a researcher and independent consultant in South Sudan, northern Kenya and Somalia.

Research interests:conflict, armed violence, public authority, political marketplace
Region of focus:Horn of Africa

Email: floramccrone@gmail.com

Liz May Policy Fellow

Liz May is a Policy Fellow with the Africa Trade Policy Programme at LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. She has over twenty-five years' experience in policy, research and advocacy work on international trade, development, environment, supply chains, business and human rights.

Research interests: International trade policy; the nexus between climate/environment, trade and development; trade and sustainable industrialisation; bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations; policy space for economic transformation

Region of focus: Africa