Dr Holly Porter

Holly Porter is Assistant Professorial Fellow in the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa, Department of International Development at the London School of Economics. Dr Porter’s research has focused on gender, sexualities, violence, and local notions of healing and justice in northern Uganda where she has lived for more than ten years. Previously, she has worked in South Sudan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Azerbaijan, and Palestine in the fields of access to justice, gender-based violence, transitional justice, peacebuilding and human rights.

She is the author of After rape: violence justice and social harmony in Uganda published by Cambridge University Press. Her work has also been published in journals including Africa, the Women's Studies International Forum, and the Journal of Eastern African Studies.

Selected publications

• Porter, Holly. 2019. Moral Spaces and Sexual Transgression: Understanding Rape in War and Post Conflict. Development and Change.
• Porter, Holly. 2018. Rape Without Bodies?: Reimagining the phenomenon we call "rape." Social Politics. 25(4): 589-612.

• Hilhorst, Dorothea, Holly Porter and Rachel Gordon. 2018. Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Humanitarian Crises. Disasters 42(S1): S3-S16.
• Hopwood, Julian, Holly Porter and Nangiro Saum. 2018. Resilient Patriarchy: Public authority and women’s (in)security in Karamoja, Uganda. Disasters 42 (S1): S140-S158
  
  
• Porter, Holly. 2017. After rape: violence, justice and social harmony in Uganda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Porter, Holly and Letha Victor. 2017. Dirty Things: spiritual pollution and life after the Lord’s Resistance Army, Journal of Eastern African Studies.
• Macdonald, Anna and Holly Porter. 2016. The trial of Thomas Kwoyelo: opportunity or spectre? Reflections from the ground on the first LRA prosecution. Africa. 86 (4): 698-722.
• Porter, Holly. 2015. After rape: Comparing civilian and combatant perpetrated crime in northern Uganda. Women’s Studies International Forum. 51 (2015): 81-90.
• Porter, Holly. 2015. ‘Say no to bad touches’: Schools, sexual identity and sexual violence in northern Uganda. International Journal of Educational Development. 41 (1): 271-281.
• Porter, Holly. 2015. Mango trees, offices and altars: The role of relatives, NGOs and churches after rape in northern Uganda. International Journal for Minority and Group Rights. 22 (3): 309-334.
• Porter, Holly. 2012. Justice and rape on the periphery: The supremacy of social harmony in the space between local solutions and formal judicial systems in northern Uganda. Journal of Eastern African Studies. 6 (1): 81-97.

Expertise

Dr Porter's research focuses on gender, sexual violence, social healing and justice, particularly on women’s experiences after rape in northern Uganda