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Research Description

My current research continues collaboration with one extended family (clan) in Acoliland, Northern Uganda. Examining community initiatives, concerns, and discourse, we will create a public oral history (with radio broadcasts) on land in the post-conflict and post-displacement context. Building on previous work on Acoli indigenous governance, and more broadly, Acoli indigenous knowledge as social repair, we are interested in conceptions around land, and people-land relationships, after the recent period of prolonged displacement and violence.

As a settler scholar employed at a Canadian University in the Department of Anthropology, I am also interested in critical decolonization of the department and University by examining, rethinking, and dealing with institutional collections in light of these histories of violence and colonization.

Teaching Description

I am committed to a teaching philosophy that creates safe, diverse spaces for respectful, critical, and creative engagement with global and local issues. As a settler scholar, I see anthropology as a discipline that has a long history of grappling with its colonial and settler roots and legacies, and believe it–at its best–to be a fruitful place for students to foster ethical and critical thinking about humanity and the world.

Public/Media (Non-Technical) Description

I have collaborated on numerous projects in and about Northern Uganda as academic, artist, activist, and lecturer since 2004. I am interested in how individuals and groups remake social relations during and after conflict and upheaval, particularly recognising the role of indigenous knowledge, land tenure and land rights generally within these processes. Looking to communities themselves as my primary guides and teachers, I strive to be useful to my hosts and collaborators.

I am also curious about the role of collections, museums, and the arts to public memory, particularly with regards to their contributions to how we understand and deal with violence.