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 (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 on 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.

Kasaija Phillip Apuuli is a Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Makerere University Kampala, Uganda. He obtained his doctorate degree in international law at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. His research concentrates on issues of International Criminal, Peace and Security in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa Regions, and Regional Integration in Africa.

Arsène Brice Bado is Vice-president for academic affairs and international relations, and professor of political science and international relations at CERAP/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.

Magreth Shimba Bushesha serves as an associate professor in Geography and Environmental Management at the Local Government Training Institute (LGTI). She focuses her research works on climate change and livelihoods – an area she has researched and published widely. She has so far participated in numerous consultancy work in environmental management. She has supervised over forty environmental-related research projects for postgraduate students successfully which added up to her research experience in her field of specialization. Administratively, Professor Bushesha serves as Deputy Rector Academic, Research, and Consultancy at LGTI. Before moving to LGTI she worked with the Open University of Tanzania where apart from serving as associate professor in the Department of Geography, she also held different administrative positions including Director of Postgraduate Studies, Director of the African Council for Distance Education-Technical Committee on Collaboration (DACDE-TCC), Director of Quality Assurance and Control, and Head of Geography Department. Professor Bushesha is an experienced policy analyst in areas of environment and natural resources management. She is a recipient of the Association of Commonwealth Universities Scholarship which enabled her to pursue her PhD studies at the University of Bradford. She also holds a master’s degree in Geography and Environmental Management and a Bachelor of Arts with education majoring in geography both from the University of Dar es Salaam.

Cedric de Coning is a Research Professor in the research group on peace, conflict, and development at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). He is also a Senior Advisor for the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) in South Africa. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the African Journal on Conflict Resolution and he coordinates the Effectiveness of Peace Operations Network (EPON). His research makes use of complexity theory to study how social-ecological systems adapts under pressure, including from climate change, and what the implications are for international peace and security. He has served in various roles and advisory capacities for the African Union and the United Nations, including on the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board for the Peacebuilding Fund. His research has been published in, amongst others, International Affairs, Global Governance, and International Peacekeeping. He co-edited 10 books, of which the most recent two are on ‘Adaptive Mediation’ (2022) and ‘Adaptive Peacebuilding’ (2023), both published by Palgrave MacMillan.

Fana Gebresenbet is the Director and an associate professor of peacebuilding and development at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies of Addis Ababa University. Before joining the University, he worked at the Africa Programme of the University for Peace. He wrote his PhD on ‘The Political Economy of Land Investments: Dispossession, Resistance, and Territory Making in Gambella, Western Ethiopia’ in the joint programme the IPSS offers jointly with Leipzig University, Germany. He has co-edited two books, Lands of the Future (Berghahn, 2021) and Youth on the Move (Hurst, 2021), and published numerous journal articles and book chapters. His research interests cover the politics of development, political economy, and peacebuilding in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. He was a fellow of APN/SSRC, Wilson Center, and Free State University. He is also a recipient of different research grants, including from UKRI/GCRF-ARUA (Migration, Urbanisation, and Conflict in Africa (MUCA)-about 2 million pounds), and is involved in different collaborative projects.

Eunice Kamaara, a professor of African Christian Ethics, is an ethicist with over thirty-year experience in transformative research for holistic health development. She is passionate about mainstreaming gender, diversity and inclusivity values and in translating research findings into practical development through policy influence and community engagement. She has more than 100 publications. She co-directs the African Character Initiation Programme, a community based and community participatory organization on mentorship of adolescents for health and values, recognized by the World Health Organization among the Top 30 2019 Africa Health Innovations https://innov.afro.who.int/innovators/professor-eunice-kamaara-25

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.

Siphokazi Magadla is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Political and International Studies 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 (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 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 Individual Research Grantee APN Fellow and a 2022-2024 Collaborative Working Group APN 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.

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.

Stephen Del Rosso (ex-officio) is director of international peace and security at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, where his work focuses on a range of issues including peacebuilding, nuclear security, and the dynamics of global power. He was director of programs at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations from 1996 to 1999 and managed the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Global Security program for almost six years. A former career diplomat, Del Rosso served nearly ten years in the U.S. Foreign Service with overseas assignments in Central America and the Caribbean. In Washington, he served in the Operations Center and on the Executive Secretariat staff of Secretary of State George Shultz, as program coordinator of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and as arms control legislative management officer and director of the Office of Legislative Management. He was also a Presidential Management Intern in the international affairs division at NASA, news producer for the Voice of America, and staff assistant to British Member of Parliament Julian Critchley. Del Rosso holds a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania; an MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he was an Earhart Fellow; a diploma in international studies from the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins SAIS; and a BA from Tufts University. He serves on several not-for-profit boards and is a member of various international affairs–related membership organizations.

Rawia Tawfik is an associate professor at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University and a visiting associate professor at the Council on African Studies (CAS) at Yale University. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in politics from the University of Oxford. She was a visiting research fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), and a researcher at the German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in Bonn. Her research interests include, African development, regional integration, and resource-based conflicts, especially conflicts over transboundary rivers in Africa, and the Nile basin in particular. Her work on these issues have appeared in leading international peer-reviewed journals, including African Studies, African Studies Review, International Negotiation, Water Alternatives, Water International, Water Policy, and The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs. Rawia has also contributed chapters on regional security complexes, Nile hydropolitics, and foreign policy of African regional powers, to several edited books, including, Foreign Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Security, Diplomacy and Trade, edited by Adekeye Adebajo and Kudrat Virk (London and New York: IB Tauris, 2017); and, the Routledge Handbook on Middle East Security, edited by Anders Jagerskog, Michael Schulz and Ashok Swain (London and New York: Routledge, 2019). She was a recipient of the APN Individual Research Grant in 2017, and the African Studies Association (ASA) Presidential Fellowship in 2018. She is an editorial board member of African Studies Review, the flagship journal of the ASA published by Cambridge University Press.

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.