Social Science Research Council

Munzoul Assal and a small group of Sudanese collaborators have compiled the most extensive bibliography of social science research on Darfur available to date. An Annotated Bibliography of Social Research on Darfur is the outcome of cooperation between the University of Bergen and the researchers at the University of Khartoum. This is an essential resource [...]

It goes without saying that Sudanese scholars are the true experts on Darfur’s crisis. The short book edited by Abdel Ghaffar Mohammed Ahmed and Leif Manger, Understanding the Crisis in Darfur: Listening to Sudanese Voices, is an essential resource for those wishing to understand how Sudanese see the conflict and the possible resolution to it.

This posting is a guide to three online sources of scholarly material on Darfur (and Sudan in general) that provide different resources for the student or professor. The most comprehensive online resource on Sudan is the Rift Valley Institute’s Sudan Open Archive. The Center for African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, hosts UnderstandingSudan.org, which is a resource specifically geared for teachers planning classes on Sudan including Darfur. Prof. R.S. O’Fahey, the premier historian of Darfur, has a website dedicated to his research in Darfur.

This posting continues a discussion of the main themes of War in Darfur and the Search for Peace (Harvard University Press 2007). The second part of the book draws on an appraisal of the Darfur peace process, conducted shortly after the closure of the Abuja peace process by several of the leading mediators and their [...]

War in Darfur and the Search for Peace is a collection of 15 essays by six Sudanese and eleven non-Sudanese scholars and specialists, published in September 2007 by Harvard University Press. This is the first of two postings that provides an outline of the origins of the book, its significance, and some of the main threads of the argument. This posting focuses on the "turbulent state" framework for understanding Sudan’s persistent dysfunction.

President Jimmy Carter on his recent visit to Sudan was outspoken in his criticism of the Sudan government, which he accused of “ethnic cleansing” and a “crime against humanity.” But he also argued that it was “unhelpful” to describe the crimes committed in Darfur as “genocide,” adding that they didn’t fit the definition contained in [...]