Nana Akua Anyidoho (Co-Chair)
University of Ghana, Ghana

Nana Akua Anyidoho is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Social Policy Studies(CSPS) at the University of Ghana. Her research focuses on the ways in which marginalized social groups (in particular, young people and women) respond to globalizing and neo-liberalizing policy structures in their struggles for social and economic rights. Given the complexity of the person-policy nexus, she brings an interdisciplinary perspective to her research: she has a BA in Psychology (1997) from the University of Ghana and a PhD in Human Development and Social Policy (2005) from Northwestern University, with additional training in African Studies, statistics, economics, and in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. She has published in development studies, gender studies, and African studies journals, and is on the editorial boards of African Affairs, African Review of Economics and Finance, Feminist Africa, Ghana Studies, Policy Studies, and Studies in Comparative International Development. Prof. Anyidoho has taught and supervised graduate students for 20 years. In addition, she was the coordinator from 2017 to 2019 of the Pan-African Doctoral Academy (PADA) at the University of Ghana, which supports doctoral training on the African continent. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association (ASA), and is a past President of the Ghana Studies Association (GSA). Details of her projects, publications, and professional service can be found at anyidoho.me.

Henrietta Nyamnjoh (Co-Chair)
University of Cape Town, South Africa

Henrietta Nyamnjoh is currently a researcher with the Migration and Mobility Hub at the University of Cape Town. Prior to this, she was a researcher with the South-South Migration, Inequality and Development (MIDEQ – www.mideq.org). Her research within the hub focuses on Childhood migration and Inequalities, to understand the levels of inequality faced by unaccompanied Ethiopian Children during their migration journey and in the host country. She holds an MPhil degree in African Studies/Development Studies and a Doctor of Philosophy, both from Leiden University. She has researched extensively on female migrants and on childhood, focusing on the left-behind children of Cameroonian economic migrants in Cape Town. Her research interests include migration and mobility, transnational studies, and migration and health. Additionally, she is also interested in understanding religion in the context of migration. Henrietta has researched and published widely on migration, transnational studies, migrants’ economy and everyday lives, food and migration, religion in the context of migration, and Hometown associations.

Afe Adogame
Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA
Afe Adogame, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society, is a leading scholar of the African diaspora. He earned a PhD in history of religions from the University of Bayreuth in Germany and has served as associate professor of World Christianity and religious studies, and director international at the School of Divinity, New College, at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His teaching and research interests are broad but tend to focus on interrogating new dynamics of religious experiences and expressions in Africa and the African diaspora, with a particular focus on African Christianities and new Indigenous religious movements, the interconnectedness between religion and migration, globalization, politics, economy, media, and the civil society.
Fiifi Edu-Afful
Conventional Arms and Ammunitions Program (CAAP), United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), Switzerland
Fiifi Edu-Afful (PhD) is a Senior Researcher and Coordinator for the Prevention of Armed Conflict and Armed Violence (PACAV) Pillar of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR)’s CAAP Program. He is currently a Fulbright Scholar-In-Residence at American University, School of International Services (SIS), and University of Maryland, Department of Politics. He was formerly a Senior Research Fellow and the Deputy Program Head of the Peace Support Operations Programme at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC). He served as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa and continues to serve as a Faculty Member on the MA Program in Defence and International Politics at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College (GAFCSC). He has nearly 15 years of experience authoring, teaching, and facilitating conflict, peace, and security. Between 2013 and 2014, he served as an Advisory Team Member for the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN peacekeeping. Furthermore, he has also served as a lead facilitator and consultant for the African Centre for the Study & Research on Terrorism (ACSRT/CAERT) and has been a specialist on KAIPTC courses on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) in Fragile, Conflict and Post-Conflict Situations. He was a Global Fellow of the Geneva Centre of Security Policy. He is a 2013 laureate of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Dakar Senegal. He is currently undertaking research on inclusive conflict prevention, arms proliferation, and management peacekeeping improving Response Capacities to Terrorism in Peacekeeping Theatres.
Arsène Brice Bado
Centre for Research and Action for Peace (CERAP), Université Jésuite, Côte d’Ivoire

Arsène Brice Bado is President and Professor of political science and international relations at the Centre for Research and Action for Peace (CERAP) at Université Jésuite in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. He is the director of the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) Africa Hub. Prior to his time at CERAP, Bado was a Southern Voices Network (SVN) Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. in 2015. He was also a visiting researcher at Yale University during the 2014-2015 academic year, and the 2017-2018 Anna and Donald Waite Endowed Chair at Creighton University in Omaha, USA. He was a recipient of the SSRC’s 2018 APN Individual Research Fellowship (IRF) and 2019 APN Book Manuscript Completion (BMC) Fellowship award. He was also a 2024 Holman Visiting Fellow at the Penn Development Research Initiative (PDR) of the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include democracy, ethnic pluralism, conflict analysis, forced migration, electoral processes in conflict-ridden societies, and foreign aid in Africa. His publications have appeared in the Journal of International Migration and Integration, the Journal of Modern African Studies, Mediterranean Politics, African Journal of Democracy and Election Research, Revue Études, Revue Relations, Débats-Courrier d’Afrique de l’Ouest, La Civiltà Cattolica, and African Journal of Democracy and Election Research. In addition, he has contributed chapters to several books; in 2015 he edited a book titled Dynamiques des guerres civiles en Afrique: Une approche holiste, Paris: L’Harmattan. He is the author of Dignity across Borders: Forced Migration and Christian Social Ethics, Denver (Colorado): Outskirts Press, 2010; La citoyenneté mondiale et l’écocitoyenneté dans le context de la crise sanitaire à COVID-19, Abidjan: Editions du CERAP, 2022. He obtained his Ph.D. in political science from Laval University in Canada in 2016.

Fana Gebresenbet
Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

Fana Gebresenbet is the Interim Head of the Center for Peace and Security Studies, Addis Ababa University. He is an Ethiopian scholar with research interests in themes related to political economy, politics of development, security, pastoralism, and migration. Fana holds a joint PhD in Global and Area Studies (with emphasis on peace and security in Africa) from the University of Leipzig (Germany) and Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia). He was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Africa Program, Centre for Africa Studies of the University of the Free State (South Africa), and Africa Peacebuilding Network (APN) of the Social Sciences Research Council, receiving the 2017 APN Individual Research Grant.

Fana has extensive fieldwork experience in various parts of Ethiopia. He has researched issues related to land investments, political economy of trade of agricultural commodities, center-periphery relations, developmentalism and migration, among others. He authored several journal articles and book chapters, and co-edited one book on these topics. He also consulted government authorities and various international organizations on these themes.

Hazel Gray
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Hazel Gray is a Senior Lecturer in African Studies and International Development. From 2021 to 2024 she was the Director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests cover African political economy, institutions, comparative economic development and industrial policy. She is on the Advisory Board of the journals Critical African Studies and African Affairs. Prior to joining academia, she worked as an economist at the Ministry of Finance in Tanzania. She was lead author for Tanzania’s Human Development Report in 2014 and 2017. She has published widely in African Studies and International Development journals. Her book Turbulence and Order in Economic Development (OUP 2018) was shortlisted for the Africa–Asia ICAS Book Prize.
Ng’wanza Kamata
University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Ng’wanza Kamata is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science within the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam. He served as the Head of Department for six years (2018–2025) and is a member of the Agrarian South Network, where he serves as Assistant Editor of the Journal of the Agrarian South and editor of the Agrarian South Bulletin. He is a co-publisher of Development as Rebellion: A Biography of Julius Nyerere and has contributed extensively to various journals and edited volumes. Additionally, he serves as the Board Chair of the Land Rights Resource Institute (HAKIARDHI).
George Karekwaivanane
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
George Karekwaivanane is the co-director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He has two main areas of research. The first focuses on the social and political history of law. His work in this area examines the mutually constitutive relationship between law, society, and politics in African history. The second research area focuses on the social, political, and economic impacts of digital media in Africa. His work has examined the use of digital media to convoke publics, mobilise protests, and disseminate disinformation. A select list of his publications includes the following: The Struggle over State Power in Zimbabwe: Law and Politics Since 1950 (CUP 2017), Pursuing Justice in Africa: Competing Imaginaries and Contested Practices (Ohio Uni Press 2018), Publics in Africa in a Digital Age (Routledge 2022), and Digital Disinformation in Africa: Hashtag Politics, Power and Propaganda (Zed Press2024). He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has served as a trustee of the British Institute of East Africa, as well as a Councillor of the African Studies Association (UK) Zimbabwe. He is currently a member of the editorial board of JSAS and Black Histories.
Pamela Khanakwa
Makerere University, Uganda
Pamela Khanakwa is a Senior Lecturer in History and the Dean of the School of Liberal and Performing Arts in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Makerere University, Kampala. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University in Evanston, USA. Her research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century Bugisu, eastern Uganda, where she has worked on ritual male circumcision and constructions of ethnicity and masculinities, land conflicts, territorial contestations and political identity, landslides and environmental management. She also works on intellectual history of History as a discipline at Makerere University. Her work has been published in the Journal of African History, African Studies Review, Journal of Eastern African Studies and as chapters in several books. Her most recent piece, “Teaching and Writing History at Makerere in Uganda: The 1950s to the 2020s” in Thula Simpson and Immanuel R. Harisch (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial African Historiography was published in May 2025. Dr. Khanakwa is a recipient of African Peacebuilding Network (APN) of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Individual grant, 2015. Research on her APN project was published in ASR. She has written two pieces in Kujenga Amani and participated in several mentorship activities organized and supported by SSRC since 2015.
Siphokazi Magadla
Rhodes University, South Africa
Siphokazi Magadla is Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa. She teaches and researches on war and militarism in Africa; armed struggle in South Africa; women and South African foreign policy; and African feminisms, gender and citizenship. In 2018, she received the Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. She is the author of the book ‘Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa’ (UKZN Press, 2023; Routledge, 2024), which won the NIHSS Humanities and Social Sciences Award for “Best Non-Fiction Monograph” and the Rhodes University Vice Chancellor’s Book Award and was shortlisted for the University of Johannesburg Prize (UJ Prize) for South African Writing. She is the co-editor of Inyathi Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili: Theorising South African Women’s Intellectual Legacies (Mandela University Press, 2024) and Thirty Years of Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Revisiting Ifi Amadiume’s Questions on Gender, Sex and Political Economy (2021) in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies. She serves on the editorial boards of the International Feminist Journal of Politics, the Journal of Southern African Studies, the Advisory Board of the Feminist Reimagining of International Studies series (FeRIS) of the Bristol University Press, and the Advisory Board of the University of Wisconsin Press Series: Women and Gender in Africa. She is an academic mentor of the Social Science Research Council’s Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship, which awarded her with the Helen Milner Award, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim African Fellows programme. She served in the Presidential High-Level Review Panel of the State Security Agency in 2018.
Jacinta Mwende Maweu
University of Nairobi, Kenya

Jacinta Mwende Maweu (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Media studies and an Associate faculty at the Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. She is the Executive Secretary, African Peace Research and Education Association (AFPREA) and a member of the executive Council of International Peace Research Association (IPRA). Her background is in Philosophy and Media studies with M.A degrees in both disciplines from the University of Nairobi and a PhD in Media Ethics and the Political economy of the Media from Rhodes University, South Africa. Jacinta has published widely in her areas of interest which include: media, conflict and peacebuilding, media and democracy, media and human rights, Digital media, media ethics, political economy of the media, climate change communication and political philosophy. Her most recent publications include: Jacinta, Maweu. 2023. ‘Election, violence and political legitimation in Africa’ in Uchenna Okeja (eds). The Routledge Handbook of African Political Philosophy, London: Routledge; Jacinta Maweu. 2023. Undermining Democracy through Social Media. The Impact of Disinformation in the 2017 Elections in Kenya in Duncan Omanga, Admire Mare and Pamela Mainye eds). Digital technologies, elections and Campaigns in Africa. London: Routledge;  Jacinta Maweu. 2022. Media, Ethnicity and Electoral Conflicts in Kenya. Rowman & Littlefield. Jacinta Maweu. 2022. ‘Networking Aloneness? Social disconnection in a Socially Connected Media world’ in Ricarda Drueke and Gmainer Franz (eds) Communication and Media in the Cultural Industry: Life, World and Politics, Peter Lang. She is a 2015 African Peacebuilding Network (APN) Individual Research Grant Fellow and a 2022-2024 APN Collaborative Working Group Fellow. Jacinta has been involved in several training and mentorship programs with early career researchers the most recent being with the Rift Valley Institute in Nairobi in collaboration with Carnegie Corporation and the Open Society University Network on the Research Community of Practice (RCoP) project.

Egodi Uchendu
University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

Egodi Uchendu is a Professor of History and International Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, a Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria (FHSN), the Royal Doyen Academy (FRDA), and the Nigerian Academy of Letters (FNAL). She researches African gender relations, conflict situations, and Islam in Eastern Nigeria among others. Her book, Islam in the Niger Delta, 1890-2017: A Synthesis of the Accounts of Indigenes and Migrants (2018), won the African Studies and Research Forum (ASRF) 2020 runner-up book prize. Uchendu has held several fellowships, awards, and grants, and served on several academic Boards. Professor Uchendu is widely published. Her latest publications include Witchcraft in Africa: Meanings, Factors, and Practices (2023); Nigeria’s 2019 Democratic Experience (2022) Negotiating Patriarchy and Gender in Africa: Discourses, Practices, and Policies (2021 & 2023), and Nigeria’s Resource Wars (2020). Professor Uchendu presides over the African Humanities Research and Development Circle (AHRDC) (www.ahrdc.academy) and coordinates the #Don’t Litter Initiative, a sustainable waste management networking initiative with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office and Access Bank Nigeria.

Omotade Akin Aina (ex-officio)
Andrew Carnegie Foundation (formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York), USA
Omotade (Tade) Akin Aina is senior program director of the Higher Education and Research in Africa program at Carnegie Corporation of New York. Previously, he was chief impact and research officer at the Mastercard Foundation, working enterprise-wide across seven African countries, three programming streams, and Canada to coproduce strategic and program-supported research, evaluations, and reviews along with knowledge mobilization and products to advance the foundation’s vision of “a world where everyone has the opportunity to learn and prosper … [and] where young people are included and are thriving and their leadership and contributions matter.” Aina oversaw work that strengthened the capacity of young researchers and institutions in Africa and among the indigenous communities of Canada while promoting alternative ways of knowing. Earlier roles at the foundation included head of research and senior director, research and learning. Aina was executive director of the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR–Kenya) from 2014 to 2020. Established in 2011 in Nairobi, Kenya, PASGR is an independent, nonpartisan, pan-African not-for-profit organization. From 2008 to 2014, he was program director of the Higher Education and Libraries in Africa program at Carnegie Corporation of New York. Aina was appointed full professor in the department of sociology at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, in 1993, having served successively as lecturer and senior lecturer at the university beginning in 1980. From 1993 to 1998 he served as deputy executive secretary (publications) at the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), in Dakar, Senegal. He worked with the Ford Foundation in its Nairobi office from 1998 to 2008, while also serving as acting representative between 2001 and 2002 in the foundation’s Cairo office, and as regional representative in its Eastern Africa office from 2003 to 2008.

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