Dr Gisa Weszkalnys

Assistant Professor in Anthropology

Dr Gisa Weszkalnys is an economic anthropologist specialising in the ethnographic study of natural resources. Focussing on oil in Africa, Dr Weszkalnys work has involved research into development with the UNDP in São Tomé and Príncipe and the Open Society Institute in Angola.

Research interests: corporations; expertise; resource extraction; state (urban) planning; materiality, natural resources, oil in Africa, politics of urban planning

Country/region of study: São Tomé and Príncipe 

Professor Matthew Engelke

Professor, Department of Anthropology

Professor Matthew Engelke is a religion and culture anthropologist focusing on the broadest sense on the connections between religion and culture, primarily in Africa and Britain the African Church in Zimbabwe and Evangelical Christians. 

Research interests: African Church in Zimbabwe, evangelical Christians in England, secular humanists in Britain

Country/region of study: Zimbabwe

Professor Rita Astuti

Professor of Social Anthropology

Professor Rita Astuti is an expert in the anthropology of Madagascar. Her first period of extensive fieldwork among Vezo fishing people took place in the late 1980s, and focused on kinship, personhood, gender, and identity. 

Research interests: gender, kinship, personhood, group identity and belief, human cooperation

Country/region of study: Madagascar

Professor Deborah James

Professor of Anthropology

Professor Deborah James is a specialist in the anthropology of South and Southern Africa where she has completed fieldwork in Mpumalanga and Limpopo Provinces and the Witwatersrand. She is currently director of an ESRC funded project on 'Investing, engaging in enterprise, gambling and getting into debt: popular economies and citizen expectations in South Africa'.

Research interests: ethnography of advice, aspiration and indebtedness, civil society, citizenship and the state

Country/region of study: South Africa

Dr Denis Regnier

Visiting Research Fellow in Anthropology

Denis Regnier received his PhD from the LSE in 2012, with a thesis on the condition of slave descendants in the southern Betsileo highlands of Madagascar. He has subsequently worked with Professor Emeritus Maurice Bloch as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow on an interdisciplinary project at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, for which he carried out further fieldwork in Madagascar.

Research interests: kinship, marriage, post-slavery 

Country/region of study: East Africa

Dr Megan Laws

LSE fellow

Dr Megan Laws is a specialist in the anthropology of southern Africa and has conducted ethnographic research in the Kalahari Desert region of Namibia and Botswana. She is also currently a researcher on an ERC-funded project ‘Extreme Citizen Science: Analysis and Visualisation’ in the Department of Geography at University College London. 

Research interests: informal economies and egalitarianism, communal lands, biodiversity, climate change

Country/region of study: Namibia, Botswana, South Africa

Clara Devlieger

Assistant Professor

Clara Devlieger is a specialist in the anthropology of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Central Africa. Her work was a runner-up for the 2018 African Studies Association of the UK Audrey Richards Prize, and she is currently editing a monograph that addresses these topics. 

Research interests: disability, rights and responsibilities, identity and difference

Country/region of study: DRC, Central Africa

Christopher Webb

Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral research fellow

Christopher Webb is trained as a human geographer although his research bridges social anthropology, political economy and critical youth studies. His post-doctoral project ‘New Technologies of Poverty: Debt, Financialization and Cash Transfer Programs in Southern Africa,’ analyses the influence of financial inclusion technologies and practices in the design and implementation of Southern Africa’s cash transfer programs. 

Research interests: labour and livelihoods, financial inclusion, cash transfers

Country/region of study: South Africa

Dr Jo de Berry

Visiting Senior Fellow

Jo is currently on sabbatical from the World Bank, where she is a Senior Social Development Specialist focused on bringing a development response to the challenges of forced displacement. Jo gained her PhD in the LSE Department of Anthropology in 2000. Her thesis explored the process of post-war recovery in the Teso region of East Uganda. 

Research interests: International development, forced displacement, Africa

Country/region of study: Africa

Anna McDonald

LSE Fellow

Anna Macdonald works at the Centre for Public Authority and International Development at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, with a particular focus on Central Africa and the dynamics of displacement, return, reintegration and cycles of violence. 

Research interests: transitional justice, international criminal justice, law and social order, 

Country/region of study: Central and East Africa

Dr Emily Freeman

Research Fellow in Social Policy, LSE Health and Personal Social Services Research Unit 

Dr Emily Freeman is an anthropological demographer focused on ageing and sexual and reproductive health, and the way in which they shape and are shaped by social institutions and processes. Her research draws on anthropological, sociological and social psychological approaches to understanding demographic phenomena.

Research interests: long-term social care, sexual behaviour and HIV/AIDS in older age, sexual health, sexual partnerships and fertility intentions

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Kirsten Ainley

Assistant Professor in International Relations

Dr Kirsten Ainley is Assistant Professor of International Relations and Director of the Centre for International Studies at the London School of Economics. She is principal investigator on the ESRC Conflict, Justice and Development project, researching the links between transitional justice and development in Colombia, Sri Lanka, Syria and Uganda.

Research interests: criminal justice, post-conflict states

Country/region of study: Uganda, Sierra Leone

Dr Leigh Gardner

Assistant Professor in Economic History

Dr Leigh Gardner's research focuses on the economic history of Africa and the British Empire. She is particularly interested in the monetary and fiscal systems of sub-Saharan Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in comparative research which places African countries in a global context.  

Research interests: economic and financial history of sub-Saharan Africa, economic development, monetary policy

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Jonathan Leape

Associate Professor of Economics

Dr Jonathan Leape is the Executive Director of the IGC. He was the founding director of the Centre for Research into Economics and Finance in Southern Africa, which was established at LSE in 1990 as an initiative of the Commonwealth Heads of Government to support the democratic transition in South Africa. 

Research interests: trade, public economics, taxation and regulation

Country/region of study: Southern Africa

Professor John Sutton

Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics

Professor John Sutton's research focuses on processes of globalisation, trade liberalisation, and economic transformations. His Enterprise Map Project aims at providing a detailed profile of industries and of leading industrial companies in each of several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Research interests: globalisation, trade liberalisation

Country/region of study: Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique

Dr Jonah Lipton

Research Officer, Centre for Public Authority and International Development

Jonah Lipton is an anthropologist and research officer at the CPAID. His research looks at the intersections between African political economy, urban neighbourhood life, crisis, and humanitarianism, with a regional focus on Sierra Leone. His doctoral thesis during the Ebola crisis examined family life, work and coming of age among young men in Freetown.

Research interests: youth, urban neighbourhood life, Ebola

Country/region of study: Sierra Leone, West Africa

Dr Michael Amoah

Visiting Fellow

Dr Michael Amoah specialises in African Politics, International Politics of Africa, Foreign Policy, Conflict and Security. He also has interests in International Political Economy, Development Studies and International Development. He has published the book ‘The New Pan-Africanism: Globalisation and the Nation-State in Africa’ .

Research interests: politics and international relations, international development, public authority

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Moritz Schuberth

CPAID Research Fellow

Moritz Schuberth is a security and development expert and has worked as a Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Manager for the global humanitarian agency Mercy Corps in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he has been coordinating research projects with Harvard University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. 

Research interests: security, conflict

Country/region of study: Africa

Professor Tim Allen

Professor in Development Anthropology

Tim Allen is inaugural Director of the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa and is Professor in Development Anthropology in the Department of International Development at LSE. He is also the lead Principal Investigator of the Centre for Public Authority and International Development.

Research interests: international criminal justice, non-formal accountability mechanisms, forced migration, reintegration following displacements

Country/region of study: Africa, East Africa

Dr Fatima El-Issawi

Research Fellow, LSE Middle East Centre

Dr Fatima El-Issawi is currently leading on a collaboration project with the American University of Dubai entitled 'Arab National Media and Politics: Democracy Revisited', looking at changes in media practices in traditional media industries in Morocco and Algeria.  

Research interests: media, politics, conflicts, media policy

Country/region of study: North Africa

Dr 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 the parliament, government agencies, local and international non-governmental organisations, the media, research think tanks and the private sector.

Research interests: legislative ethics, anti-corruption, open government partnership

Country/region of study: Nigeria

Vanessa Iwowo

Senior Visiting Fellow

Dr Vanessa Iwowo is Programme Director, MSc. HRD & Consultancy and Lecturer in Organisational Psychology at the School of Business, Economics and Informatics, Birkbeck, University of London. She is an award-winning management scholar whose research focuses on ways of enhancing leadership development in multinational/cross-cultural contexts with a particular interest in Africa.

Research interests: Management, Leadership Development, Organisational Psychology

Country/region of study: Africa

Kenneth Amaeshi

Visiting Professor

Kenneth Amaeshi is a leading scholar on sustainable business and finance in the global south. He is the Chair in Business and Sustainable Development and Director Scaling Business in Africa at the University of Edinburgh. Kenneth's research interest currently focuses on financial market reforms and governance, as well as on sector-level policies for sustainability and sustainability strategy in organisations.  

Research interests: sustainable finance, organisational transformation, governance

Country/region of study: Africa

Professor Gibril Faal

Visiting Professor in Practice

Gibril Faal is a multi-disciplinary business and development executive, and visiting professor in practice at the LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA). 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, diaspora

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Marsha Henry

Associate Professor

Dr Marsha Henry joined LSE in July 2009, having previously taught at University of Bristol, University of British Columbia, Canada, the Open University and Warwick University. She completed her postgraduate studies at Warwick obtaining a PhD in Women and Gender in 2001.

Research interests: gender and development, gender and militarisation, development

Country/region of study: Congo,Sierra Leone, Liberia 

Dr Claire Mercer

Professor of Human Geography

Dr Mercer works at the interface of human geography, African Studies and Development Studies, developing a geographical critique of the concept of civil society and spatiality in African civil society. Claire’s current research explores the significance of property to middle class reproduction in suburban Dar es Salaam. 

Research interests: postcolonial studies, civil society, NGOs, class, African diaspora, architecture

Country/region of study: Tanzania, Cameroon 

Dr Murray Low

Associate Professor of Human Geography

Dr Murray Low's research focuses on relationships between geography and democracy including institutional and spatial aspects of elections, changing practices of accountability and legitimacy in cities, and the geography of political party organisations and social movements. He has recently completed research funded by the Leverhulme Foundation into city democratisation in South Africa. 

Research interests: cities, urban areas

Country/region of study: South Africa

Dr Stephan Kyburz

Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr Stephan Kyburz is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Economic Performance at London School of Economics and Political Science. In his main research project, he analyses the political resource curse in Nigeria, examining how institutionalised resource rents affect local development and violence.

Research interests: conflict economics, economic growth and development, regional economics

Country/region of study: Nigeria

Dr Omar McDoom

Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics

Dr Omar McDoom is interested in the causes of political violence between groups, defined along ethnic, religious or other social lines. He has particular knowledge of the Rwandan genocide and of Africa’s Great Lakes. He is also interested in the politics of the development and humanitarian aid industries.

Research interests: conflict, violence, and security, ethnic and religious integration, African politics

Country/region of study: Rwanda, Africa, Southeast Asia

Dr Joachim Wehner

Associate Professor in Public Policy

Dr Joachim Wehner research interests include public budgeting, fiscal policy, legislatures, decentralisation, as well as governance and politics in Africa. Joachim is Associate Professor in Public Policy in the Department of Government. 

Research interests: fiscal policy, legislatures, South African politics

Country/region of study: South Africa

Professor Katrin Flikschuh

Professor in Political Theory

Professor Katrin Flikschuh works on the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant and its relationship with contemporary political liberalism. She has a special focus on Kant's cosmopolitanism and current debates on cosmopolitanism/ global distributive justice. She is interested in the relationship between moral and political values and notions of global political responsibility. 

Research interests: modern African philosophy, political philosophy, political thought

Country/region of study: West Africa

Dr Ryan Jablonski

Assistant Professor in Government

Dr Ryan Jablonski specialises in the international political economy of development. His current research examines how political incentives influence foreign aid distribution and effectiveness. He also conducts research on the effects of electoral violence and the role of transnational crime and piracy on economic development.

Research interests: Foreign aid, international development, international political economy

Country/region of study: Malawi, Uganda, Kenya

Dr George Ofosu

Assistant Professor

Dr George K. Ofosu joined the Department of Government in 2019. His research focuses on political accountability, election integrity, legislator behavior, and the quality of democracy, with a regional focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Research interests: elections, political accountability,  African politics

Country/region of study: Sub-saharan Africa

Professor John Chalcraft

Professor of Middle East History and Politics

John Chalcraft completed post-graduate work at Harvard, Oxford and New York University, where he received his doctorate with distinction in the modern history of the Middle East in January 2001. He was a Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Edinburgh University from 2000-05. 

Research interests: protest, human rights, activism

Country/region of study: North Africa

Professor Declan Conway

Professorial Research Fellow in the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment 

Professor Declan Conway's research cuts across water, climate and society, with a strong focus on adaptation and international development. He has over 20 years’ experience working in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia (particularly China).

Research interests: water security, climate change, adaptation and development, water-energy-food nexus

Country/region of study: Sub-saharan Africa

Dr Aduragbemi Banke-Thomas

LSE Fellow in Health Policy

Dr Banke-Thomas contributes to teaching the Health Care Financing and Financing Health Care: Comparative Perspectives modules, and to research in international health policy. His research interest is focused on geographic information systems to generate critical evidence needed to inform better decision making for maternal and newborn health in low- and middle-income countries.

Research interests: maternal health, health economics, health policy

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan Africa

Dr Justin Parkhurst

Associate Professor in Global Health Policy

Dr Justin Parkhurst is Associate Professor in Global Health Policy. He is co-director of the MSc in Health Policy, Planning, and Financing programme, and steering group member of the LSE Global Health Initiative. He is interested in global health politics and policy and the political aspects of the use of evidence to inform policy decisions. 

Research interests: global health politics and policy

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan Africa

Dr Clare Wenham

Fellow, LSE Health

Dr Wenham’s work for the most part falls in the cross over between global health and international relations. In particular her work focuses on pandemic influenza, Ebola and more broadly on the governance structures of the global health landscape and global disease control. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the Centre for Health and International Relations at Aberystwyth University. 

Research interests: global health security, global health governance, Zica, COVID-19, Ebola

Country/region of study: Africa

Katie Shuford

Policy Officer

Katie is currently part of the LSE team working on the African Health Observatory - Platform on Health Systems and Policies (AHOP). Katie has a multi-disciplinary background in public health and international development, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

Research interests: public health, international development, digital Health

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan Africa

Beth Kreling

Senior Policy Fellow

Beth Kreling is a Senior Policy Fellow in the Department of Health Policy. Beth has a background in international development and consultancy, with a regional focus on Africa and India. Beth is currently the operational lead for the LSE team working on the African Health Observatory Platform (AHOP). 

Research interests: global health, international development, Commonwealth education

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Charles Ebikeme

Dr Charles Ebikeme

Dr Charles Ebikeme is a Policy Officer in the Department of Health Policy. Charles is currently part of the LSE team working on the African Health Observatory Platform on Health Systems & Policies (AHOP). His PhD focused on understanding how drugs work against parasites and how parasites become resistant to drugs. 

Research interests: health policy, science communication

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Lucy Kanya

Assistant Professorial Research Fellow

Dr Lucy Kanya has a health economics and policy background with experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has worked in operational research and evaluation programs on maternal and new-born child health, integrated sexual reproductive health and HIV/AIDS and malaria programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Research interests: health policy, the economics of health care financing, private sector engagement in health

Country/region of study: Africa, Kenya, Uganda

Dr Lesong Conteh

Associate Professorial Research Fellow

Dr Lesong Conteh is a health economist with a research focus on the economics of infectious diseases, primarily malaria, and health system performance in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has extensive experience of coordinating multi-country economic evaluations to assess the impact of introducing and scaling up interventions via different delivery strategies.

Research interests: health policy, malaria

Country/region of study: Africa, Gambia 

Dr Kate Meagher

Associate Professor in Development Studies

Dr Kate Meagher has engaged in extensive research on the informal economy in rural and urban Africa, with a particular focus on Nigeria. Her research focuses on the changing character of the informal economy in contemporary Africa, and the implications of economic informalisation for development, democratisation and globalisation. 

Research interests: vigilantism, organised crime, new religious movements

Country/region of study: Nigeria

Dr Ernestina Coast

Associate Professor in Population Studies

Dr Ernestina Coast’s research is positioned at an intersection of social science perspectives and approaches including health, gender, demography and development. Her research is multidisciplinary and positioned at an intersection of social science approaches including health, gender and development.  

Research interests: sexual and reproductive health

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Joseph Hanlon

Visiting Senior Fellow in International Development

Half of Dr Joseph Hanlon’s work is on Mozambique. He has written seven books on Mozambique and has reported on all of Mozambique's multi-party elections. The other half of his work has been more varied, including civil wars, cash transfers (child benefit, non-contributory pension, etc), and Zimbabwe's land reform. 

Research interests: cash transfers, child benefits, non-contributory pensions, land reform, civil wars

Country/region of study: Mozambique, Zimbabwe

Professor Teddy Brett

Visiting Professor in International Development

Professor Teddy Brett’s research interests lie in the political economy of development, institutional and organisational reform and problems of crisis and reconstruction in Africa, and especially in Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Research interests: developement, politics

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan Africa

Dr Elliott Green

Associate Professor of Development Studies

Dr Elliott Green is primarily concerned with the political demography of ethnicity and nationalism in the modern world, with a specific focus on sub-Saharan Africa. In particular he is interested in the causes and consequences of urbanisation, the origins of ethnic diversity and ethnic identity change, the relationship between nationalism and economic development and the political economy of rural patronage. 

Research interests: urbanisation, ethnicity, identity 

Country/region of study: Uganda, Tanzania and Botswana.

Professor David Keen

Professor of Complex Emergencies

David Keen received his doctorate from Oxford. His study of the political economy of famine was published by Princeton University Press as The Benefits of Famine. He is also the author of The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars (Oxford University Press) and The Best of Enemies: Conflict and Collusion in Sierra Leone (James Currey/Palgrave Macmillan, scheduled for 2004). 

Research interests: civil war, famine, human rights, 

Country/region of study: Sierra Leone and Sudan

Holly Porter

Assistant Professorial Fellow

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. 

Research interests: sexual violence, social healing, justice

Country/region of study: Uganda

Laura Mann

Assistant Professor

Laura Mann is a sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda) but she has also worked on collaborative research on ICTs and BPO in Asia and has conducted fieldwork in North America as part of a project on digitisation within global agriculture.

Research interests: political economy, new information and communication technologies, Sudanese politics and history

Country/region of study: Sudan, Kenya

Dr Georgina Pearson

LSE Fellow

Georgina’s research investigates global health priorities from an interdisciplinary, biosocial perspective. Georgina’s PhD, Global health, local realities: neglected diseases in northwestern Uganda, was based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and epidemiological study exploring everyday realities of neglected diseases (schistosomiasis, Buruli ulcer and hepatitis) among fishermen and women. 

Research interests: methods and ethics in health research, local understandings of health, public interventions

Country/region of study: Uganda

Dr Stephanie Levy

Visiting Research Fellow in International Development

Dr Stephanie Levy is a development economist with over 15 years of experience in rural development and poverty reduction policies in Africa and South-East Asia. As an academic researcher, she worked on agricultural development policies, including natural resources management, public investment in rural infrastructure and services, food price and poverty reduction

Research interests: local economic impact of social protection, rural development policies, social transfers, impacts of financial shocks

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Sandra Sequeira

Assistant Professor in Development Economics

Dr Sandra Sequeria's research applies a combination of experimental and quasi-experimental methods to three broad themes in development economics: infrastructure and growth, private sector development in developing countries and the economic costs of bureaucratic corruption. 

Research interests: CSR, frair trade, corruption

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan Africa

Dr Philipa Mladovsky

Assistant Professor in International Development

Dr Philipa Mladovsky’s research interests include universal health coverage, health care financing, equity in access to health care, migrant health and the impact of the financial crisis on health systems. Between 2011 and 2014 she was the scientific coordinator of Health Inc. 

Research interests: universal health coverage, health care financing, equity in access to health care

Country/region of study: Ghana and Senegal

Professor Catherine Boone

Professor of African Political Economy | Programme Director, African Development

Catherine Boone is Professor of Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a political scientist interested in patterns conducted research on industrial, commercial, and land tenure policies in West Africa, where her work has been funded by the SSRC, Fulbright, the World Bank, and the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and the ACLS, and the Long Chair in Democratic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Research interests: comparative politics, political science, institutions, 

Country/region of study: West Africa

Dr Naomi Pendle

Research Officer, Centre for Public Authority and International Development 

Dr Naomi Pendle focuses on public authority, patterns of violence and local governance particularly in South Sudan. Naomi has carried out ethnographic and qualitative research in South Sudan since 2009, with a particular focus on Nuer and Dinka communities. 

Research interests: governance, conflict, famine

Country/region of study: South Sudan, Uganda

Dr Gianluca Iazzolino

LSE Fellow

Gianluca Iazzolino is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of International Department based at the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa. He is currently working on the ESRC project “A Tale of Two Green Valleys”, which focuses on Data-driven agro-innovation in California’s Central Valley and Kenya’s Rift Valley

Research interests: ICTs, digital finance, informal economy

Country/region of study: Horn of Africa, Kenya, Somalia

Dr Tiziana Leone

Assistant Professor in Social Policy

Dr Tiziana Leone is a demographer with a statistical background. She is particularly interested in reproductive maternal health and health systems in low-income countries. Dr Leone is currently working on projects that analyse the effect of health systems reforms on health inequalities and on the demand versus supply influence on the increasing caesarean sections' rates. 

Research interests: applied social statistics, demographic data, demography, population studies, reproductive health

Country/region of study: Africa

Max Gallien

Phd student in the Department of International Development

Max Gallien is a political scientist specialising in the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, development politics, as well as informal and illegal economies. His PhD project, 'Smugglers and States - A Political Economy of Informal Trade in North Africa', is based on 14 months of in-depth fieldwork in the borderlands of Tunisia and Morocco. 

Research interests: Informal economies, development, smuggling

Country/region of study: North Africa

Nicolai Schulz

Phd student in the Department of International Development

Nicolai Schulz is a political scientist researching the political economy of development, with a focus on industrial and trade policy in sub-Saharan Africa. He holds a BA from the University of Konstanz, a MSc from the LSE, and works as a research associate at the University of Manchester Effective States and Inclusive Development research center. 

Research interests: development, comparative politics, mixed methods

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan Africa 

Carolin Dieterle

PhD Student

Carolin Dieterle is a PhD student in the department of International Development. Carolin’s research focuses on land conflict, property rights, and public authority in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on the processes of land acquisition.

Research interests: comparative politics, development, land tenure systems

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan Africa

Dr Eyob Balcha Gebremariam

LSE Fellow

Eyob was previously a Fellow at the LSE Department of International Development after earning a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in Development Policy and Management. His dissertation examined how the politics of building a developmental state in Ethiopia shaped the citizenship of young people in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Research interests: politics of development, urban politics, African political economy, citizenship, young people in politics, youth employment and regional integration.

Country/region of study: Africa

Isaac Haruna Ziaba

PhD student in the Department of International Development

Isaac Haruna Ziaba is a Ph.D student whose project examines variation in the making of artisanal and small-scale mining policies in Africa. His project is based on a 12-month intensive fieldwork in Ghana and Tanzania beginning from April 2019. Isaac holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Ghana and MSc in International Conflict and Cooperation from Stirling University, UK.

Research interests: elections, mining, natural resource management

Country/region of study: Ghana, Tanzania

Dr Ian Madison

LSE Fellow and Programme Co-Director, International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies

Ian Madison is an LSE Fellow in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies (IDHE) at the Department of International Development. His research focuses on the politics of citizenship and public service delivery during periods of conflict or natural disaster. Ian holds a PhD in International Development from the University of Oxford and an MSc in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies from LSE.

Research interests: peacebuilding, statebuilding, conflict, international development

Country/region of study: East Africa

Dr Jonathan Weigel

Assistant Professor of International Development

Jonathan Weigel is an assistant professor in the Department of International Development at the LSE, an affiliate of STICERD, CEPR, and EGAP, and an invited researcher of the J-PAL Governance Initiative. His research interests are at the intersection of political economy, development, and public economics. 

Research interests: political economy, taxation, corruption

Country/region of study: Central Africa

Dr Allard Duursman
Former Research Fellow International Development

Allard is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich. His research focuses on how mediation and peacekeeping can help to prevent and end armed conflict. He completed my PhD at the University of Oxford in 2015, focusing on the role of legitimacy in mediation process. 

Research interests: conflict, peacekeeping, mediation

Country/region of study: Africa

Kara Blackmore

Phd student in the Department of International Development

Kara Blackmore is a curator and anthropologist who works at the intersection of arts, heritage and post conflict reconstruction. She has more than a decade of experience in east and southern Africa working for NGOs, cultural institutions and government entities. Her research investigates the politics of memory and memorialisation in Uganda. 

Research interests: post-conflict reconstruction, arts

Country/region of study: East Africa

Dr Imaobong Umoren

Assistant Professor, International History

Dr Imaobong Umoren studied a BA in History and MA in World History and Cultures at King’s College London before moving to the University of Oxford where she gained her DPhil and spent a year serving as a Fulbright scholar at Harvard University. Dr Umoren's research interests include the intersecting history of race, gender, migration and religion in the nineteenth and twentieth century Caribbean, US and global African diaspora. 

Research interests: black internationalism, black Britain, Afro-Caribbean and African American women’s political and intellectual history, modern Caribbean

Country/region of study: African diasporas, Caribbean

Dr Joanna Lewis

Associate Professor in Imperial and African History

Dr Joanna Lewis is a historian of the historical relationship between Britain and Africa. Her research has focused on the ideology and practice of colonial rule from pre-Scramble, through to the end of the Cold War. She has recently finished a monograph on David Livingstone, ideology and humanitarianism. 

Research interests: modern African history, precolonial, contemporary periods

Country/region of study: Africa

Celine Mitchell

PhD Student

Celine is currently working under the supervision of Dr Joanna Lewis. She holds a BA in Middle Eastern studies (with Arabic) from the University of Manchester and an MSc in History of International Relations from LSE. In 2018, she was awarded LSE’s Medlicott Prize for her master’s thesis, ‘French Algerian Hip-Hop: Colonialism, the Civil War and the Homeland.’

Research interests: colonialism, post-colonialism, identity, belonging

Country/region of study: North Africa

Dr Jake Subryan Richards

Assistant Professor

Jake Subryan Richards is a historian of law, empire, and the African diaspora in the Atlantic world. His first book project analyzes the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade as a violent legal regime. Other research projects include using museum collections to tell histories of power and enslavement in the Atlantic world and the intellectual history of post-emancipation societies.

Research interests: African diaspora, legal history, law, empire, slavery, empire, sovereignty, violence, ethnography

Country/region of study: West Africa

Dr Alessandro Iandolo

British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in International History

Dr Alessandro Iandolo’s main research interest is the history of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, with a specific focus on Soviet economic and technical cooperation with the Third World. His doctoral thesis is a study of the USSR’s relations with Ghana, Guinea and Mali during the Khrushchev era, based on Soviet, Ghanaian, Malian, British and French sources.

Research interests: conflict, co-operation

Country/region of study: Ghana, Mali

Professor Chris Alden

Professor in International Relations and Director of the Global South Unit

Professor Chris Alden is a former Programme Head, Global Powers and Africa, South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). He has contributed to research, conferences and publications on the South African foreign policy since 1991, on the changing role of China and Africa since 1992 and China and Latin America since 2007. 

Research interests: South African foreign policy, China-Africa studies, comparative foreign policy

Country/region of study: Africa

Olu Fasan

Visiting Fellow

Olu Fasan is a Visiting Fellow in the International Relations Department of the London School of Economics (LSE), and a member of the LSE’s International Trade Policy Unit. He is also currently a senior adviser on energy and climate change policy with the UK Government. 

Research interests: energy, trade, climate change

Country/region of study: Africa

Paduano Stephen

PhD candidate

Stephen Paduano is a doctoral researcher at the London School of Economics. He studies international political economy and the interaction between US and Chinese economic statecraft in sub-Saharan Africa. His focus is on infrastructure, lending, and development policy in East Africa.

Research interests: US and Chinese foreign economic policy, international political economy, infrastructure, lending, and development policy

Country/region of study: East Africa

Dr Milli Lake

Associate Professor of International Relations

Dr Milli Lake is an Associate Professor of International Security at the London School of Economics' Department of International Relations. She completed her doctorate in Political Science at the University of Washington in 2014, and her expertise lies in political violence, institutional reform, and the rule of law, predominantly in violence and conflict-affected states.

Research interests: civil wars, political violence, security, state-building

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan Africa

Dr Jens Meierhenrich

Associate Professor of International Relations

Dr Jens Meierhenrich is the author of Lawfare: The Formation and Deformation of Gacaca Jurisdictions in Rwanda, 1994-2012 and also recently authored The Legacies of Law: Long-Run Consequences of Legal Development in South Africa, 1652-2000.

Research interests: rule of law, transitional justice, international criminal law, authoritarianism, genocide

Country/region of study: South Africa, Rwanda

Dr Chaloka Beyani

Associate Professor of International Law
Member of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and Advisory Board Chair

Dr Beyani studied law at the University of Oxford (D.Phil) and at the University of Zambia (UNZA)(LLB, LLM). He has taught international law, human rights, public law, and criminal law at Oxford and UNZA. He is Visiting Professor of International Law at the University of Toronto and Santa Clara University. 

Research interests: international law, treaty and constitution making, peace making

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Roger Fon

LSE Fellow

Dr Roger Fon is a Fellow at the LSE. He holds a PhD in Management from the University of Kent and an MSc in International Business and Economic Development from the University of Reading. His research interests include the investment location decisions of emerging market multinational enterprises, Chinese foreign direct investment in Africa, foreign aid and FDI, and the impact of institutions on foreign direct investment flows. 

Research interests: foreign direct investment, China’s outward FDI into Africa, emerging market multinational enterprises

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Wendy Willems

Assistant Professor in Media and Communications

Dr Wendy Willems’ work treats the continent as a starting point for theorising media and communications. Her research engages with ongoing debates on the ‘internationalisation’, ‘de-westernisation’, or ‘decolonisation’ of the field of media and communication studies. Dr Willems is also Programme Director of the double MSc/MA degree in Global Media and Communications (LSE and University of Cape Town).

Research interests: global digital culture and social change, urban communication, postcolonial/decolonial approaches to media and communication

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi

Assistant Professor

Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His work focuses on questions around the global power asymmetries in the reporting and representation of conflict. He researches digital journalism, the politics of time and memory, and the geopolitics of popular culture, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. 

Research interests: global communication and comparative journalism, digital activism, collective memory

Country/region of study: North Africa

Husseina Ummayma Ahmed

PhD Researcher

Husseina's research interests lie at the intersection of media culture, platform politics, gender and development. She holds a B.A in Economics with a concentration in Development and a minor in Philosophy from Carleton University, Canada and a MSc in Media, Communications and Development from LSE. 

Research interests: feminism, agency in the national and international public spheres, development

Country/region of study: Nigeria

Dr Richard Stupart 

Richard has an academic interest in the intersection between narratives of 'Africa', conflict and development assistance. He holds an MA in Media Studies from Rhodes University analysing the understandings present in coverage of the 2011/12 Somalia famine and a Masters in Public Policy from the Willy Brandt School, Universitaet Erfurt, examining the validity, reliability, and legitimacy of conflict databases as research tools in memory/archive projects. 

Research interests: narratives of 'Africa', conflict, development assistance, conflict, postcolonial studies

Country/region of study: South Sudan, Africa

Dr Chana Teeger

Assistant Professor

Chana Teeger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Methodology and a Faculty Associate of the International Inequalities Institute. She completed her PhD in Sociology at Harvard University in 2013. Prior to joining the LSE in 2016, she held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Sociology Department at the University of Johannesburg.

Research interests: education, racial inequality

Country/region of study: South Africa

Bronwen Manby

Senior Policy Fellow

Bronwen has written on a wide range of human rights issues in Africa, with particular interests in South Africa and Nigeria (especially the oil industry in the Niger Delta), and in continental developments in human rights law. In 2015, she was awarded a doctorate by Maastricht University faculty of law Citizenship and Statelessness in Africa: The Law and Politics of Belonging.

Research interests: human rights law, statelessness, democracy

Country/region of study: South Africa, Nigeria

Dr Jonathan Hill

Former Visiting Fellow

Jon is Reader in Postcolonialism and the Maghreb in the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London. His most recent book, Democratisation in the Maghreb, draws on Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s democratisation model to chart and compare the political development of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania over the past 10 years.

Research interest: political processes, structures and cultures in contemporary North Africa

Country/region of study: Sudan, North Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, North Africa

Dr Shamel Azmeh

Former Visiting Fellow

Shamel Azmeh is Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath. At the Centre, he led a three-year collaboration project with the American University in Cairo examining the integration of Morocco and Egypt in 'Mediterranean Production Networks' with European partners. 

Research interests: trade policy, global value chains, economics

Country/region of study: Sudan, North Africa, Egypt

Dr Souad Mohamed

Visiting Fellow

Souad is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Chief Executive Officer of IEL International. She is an interdisciplinary scholar, women empowerment, and youth development expert with over 15 years in learning and development in higher education in the UK. Her multidisciplinary research includes women leadership development with a focus on top management career trajectories in the MENA region.

Research interests: executive development; women development youth empowerment

Country/region of study: Sudan, North Africa

Professor Alex Voorhoeve

Professor of Philosophy

Professor Voorhoeve is Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has co-authored papers on principles for fair priority-setting and the design of health insurance packages with public health experts from several African countries, including Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Morocco, and Uganda.

Research interests: decision theory, moral psychology, allocation of resources for health

Country/region of study: Africa

Professor Catherine Campbell

Professor of Social Psychology

Professor Catherine Campbell is a community health psychologist with a particular interest in the community-level determinants of health, and the potential for various forms of grassroots community participation to enhance health and well-being in marginalised communities - particularly in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in less affluent countries.

Research interests: HIV/AIDs, mental health, global health, psychology, women's health

Country/region of study: Africa

Dr Hakan Seckinelgin

Associate Professor (Reader)

Hakan Seckinelgin is a political theorist who has developed a multidisciplinary research programme by combining theoretical work with empirical studies. His work focuses on both the epistemology and politics of international social policy by engaging with people’s lives in different contexts.

Research interests: HIV/AIDS policy, NGOs, social policy, social work, civil society

Country/region of study: Sub-Saharan, Africa

Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey

Assistant Professor

Robtel Neajai Pailey is Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy. A Liberian scholar-activist working at the intersection of Critical Development Studies, Critical African Studies and Critical Race Studies, Robtel 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: political economy of development; citizenship, migration, conflict and post-war recovery, governance, race, racism and racialisation processes

Country/region of study: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somaliland

Dr Claire Moon

Associate Professor in Sociology
Senior Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Human Rights

Claire Moon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, a member of LSE Human Rights and an Associate of LSE’s Latin America and Caribbean Centre. She has degrees in literature, international relations and politics. Her research engages with broad themes such as the nation, justice, atrocities and human rights. 

Research interests: human rights, criminology

Country/region of study: South Africa

Ronald Suresh Roberts

Visiting Senior Fellow

Ronald Suresh Roberts has an extensive background in the law, politics, policy and culture of South Africa and the African diaspora since 1994. Roberts previously graduated from Harvard Law School (LLM) and Balliol College (BA, Law). His Visiting Senior Fellowship is supported by a dedicated AHRC/NWCDTP award associated with his AHRC/NWCDTP research at the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice.

Research interests: law, politics, policy

Country/region of study: South Africa