Committee List
(For short biographies, please see beneath)
President: Mr Ibrahim El Salahi
Chair: Dr Douglas H. Johnson
Hon. Treasurer: Mr Adrian Thomas
Hon. Secretary: Ms Gill Lusk
Sudan Studies Editor: Dr Jack Davies
Website Editor: Mr Michael Medley
Ordinary Members:
Mr Jacob Akol
Mr Philip Bowcock
Dr Anisa Dani
Miss Joan Hall CBE
Mrs Jane R. Hogan
Dr A. El Bushra Ibrahim
Mr Dan Large
Dr Cherry Leonardi
Dr David Lindley
Mr John Ryle
Dr Derek Welsby
Rev. Andrew Wheeler
Prof. Peter Woodward
Magistrates' court at Wadi Tarni in Darfur
Photo reproduced by permission of Durham University Library
Short Biographies
Jacob J Akol is a veteran Sudanese journalist who worked in Juba and Khartoum from the mid-1970s to early 80s. Though later based in Nairobi for close to 20 years, his work as an aidworker/ journalist covered Sudan's years of war. He is currently running Gurtong, an information website mostly about Southern Sudan. He is the author of recently published books: I Will Go the Distance: The story of a 'lost' Sudanese boy of the sixties and Burden of Nationality: Memoirs of an African aidworker/journalist 1970s-1990s (Paulines Publications Africa).
Philip Bowcock’s involvement with the Sudan began in 1948 as a national serviceman, after Oxford University. In 1949 he was appointed to the Sudan Political Service and served at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies in the Lebanon, then as Assistant District Commissioner Khartoum Province and Western Nuer District, Bentiu, and finally as District Commissioner Zeraf District, Fanjak. He then had a decade as District Officer and Magistrate in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). This was followed by work in the Home Civil Service and as a solicitor.
Anisa Dani’s parents were from Southern Sudan and she grew up in Bahr el Ghazal. She has worked as Teaching Assistant at Ahfad University College for Women, Omdurman, Sudan, and also for Development Alternative Inc. (DAI), a USAID funded project at Yambio Institute of Agriculture. She completed her Dip.CD, M.Ed and PhD at the University of Manchester and has worked for the Departments of Psychology and Sociology, and Education there. She has developed projects etc at the University and has become a British citizen.
John Davies (Sudan Studies Editor) was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Geography at Khartoum University in 1955. He was particularly involved in the mapping of Sudan's First Census of 1955-56. His main research interests subsequently have been in the interplay between people and environment in drylands. In 1960 he joined the Geography Department of University of Wales Swansea but continued to visit Sudan almost annually from 1967 to 1991 whilst working on a joint project between Swansea and the University of Khartoum. He has also carried out research in other parts of Africa.
Ahmed el Bushra lectured in the Department of History at the University of Khartoum from 1960 to 1968. After a period in the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, he returned to his post in Khartoum in 1976, whilst concurrently supervising the Juba University Centre in Khartoum. In 1984 he was seconded to the Sudan Embassy in London as Cultural Counsellor, later serving as Academic Adviser to the Embassy of Qatar. He participated in archaeological fieldwork with the Khartoum/Ghana mission to Ancient Merawi, and spent time with the Egypt Exploration Society mission to Qasr Ibrim and the Polish mission to Old Dongola.
Jane Hogan is a Senior Assistant Keeper at Durham University Library, where she has been responsible for the Sudan Archive since 1997. She has visited the Sudan three times between 2000 and 2008. With M.W. Daly she is co-author of Images of Empire: Photographic sources for the British in the Sudan (Leiden, 2005).
Douglas H. Johnson (Chair) first visited the Sudan in 1969 after meeting Sudanese students at Makerere University College, Uganda, where he was studying. Since that time he has done historical research in the Southern Sudan, served as Assistant Director for Archives in the former Southern Regional Government, and worked in various relief programmes during the recent civil war. He was appointed an international expert on the Abyei Boundaries Commission, and is the author, editor or co-editor of ten books on Sudanese topics.
Cherry Leonardi went to Khartoum in 2002-3 to undertake archival research for her doctoral thesis for Durham University on the history of chiefs in Condominium Southern Sudan. She visited Yei in Southern Sudan for the first time in 2004 and has spent many months since then in Equatoria and Lakes States working on a UN research consultancy and then a two-year postdoctoral oral history project on local political cultures. She has now started a two-year lectureship in African History in Durham University.
David Lindley first visited the Sudan as an environmental scientist in 1982 under a British Council link between his Research Institute and the Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Khartoum. Until 1990 annual visits (up to 6 weeks) were made to carry out teaching commitments and field work which was mainly concerned with tree and crop growth linked with soil fertility.
Gill Lusk (Secretary) first went to the Sudan in 1975 and taught English in Nyala in Southern Darfur, and El Kamlin in the Gezira. She worked at Sudanow magazine in Khartoum for around four years, and subsequently as a freelance journalist in the capital until 1987. She then became Deputy Editor of Africa Confidential newsletter until 2006. She now writes and broadcasts on the Sudan and related topics.
Sudan has been Michael Medley's main focus of work since 1987, when he taught in a higher secondary school in the Gezira. He then turned aid-worker, living first in Khartoum and later in opposition-held areas of the South and East. In 2002 he returned to UK to study for a PhD on the humanitarian response to the 1998 famine in Bahr al-Ghazal.
John Ryle worked in Sudan as an anthropological researcher in the early 1980s and returned in the 1990s as an aid worker, journalist and film-maker. He is co-founder and Chair of the Rift Valley Institute, an association of specialists that maintains the Sudan Open Archive. He teaches anthropology at Bard College in New York State.
Adrian Thomas first visited Sudan in 1968 on his way home from a VSO teaching assignment in Tanzania. Ten years later he wrote a dissertation on education in Southern Sudan, whilst studying at the University of London Institute of Education. In 1991 he went to Khartoum as Director of the British Council, and spent four memorable years there. His other main involvement with Sudan now is as a trustee of the charity Together for Sudan.
Derek Welsby has directed archaeological surveys and excavations on many sites in northern and central Sudan since 1982. He is an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum with special responsibility for the Sudanese collections and was lead curator for the Sudan, Ancient Treasures exhibition held in the museum in 2004. He is President of the International Society for Nubian Studies and Honorary Secretary of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society (SARS). Among his roles in SARS he edits its annual peer reviewed journal, Sudan & Nubia, and its monograph series.
Andrew Wheeler first went to Sudan in 1977 with the Church Mission Society (CMS). He has worked in various forms of residential and distance education, training leaders for the Episcopal Church. He and his wife have also worked with Sudanese refugees in Cairo. From 1992-96 he was on the staff of the New Sudan Council of Churches as Co-ordinator for Theological Training. From 1996-2000 he worked with William Anderson and many Sudanese researchers on a project on history and faith in Sudan. This has resulted in a number of volumes, most significantly a major text on Sudanese Church History, Day of Devastation, Day of Contentment: A history of the Sudanese Church across 2000 years.
Peter Woodward first went to Sudan in 1966 as a VSO English teacher in Kosti. He later taught in the Department of Political Science, University of Khartoum, before joining Reading University where he has continued to write on Sudan and its neighbouring countries. He also chairs the Gordon Memorial College Trust Fund which assists with Sudanese education.