Social Science Research Council

Alex de Waal and Richard Dowden

Alex de Waal is a program director of the Social Science Research Council, a senior fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and a director of Justice Africa in London. He started his research career on the Horn of Africa in 1984 with a study of the famine in Darfur and subsequently studied the social, political and health dimensions of famine, war, genocide and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He was co-founder and co-director of African Rights (1992-98), chairman of Mines Advisory Group (1993-98), initiator of the Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa (2002-03), and a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard (2004-06). In 2006 Alex served as advisor to the African Union mediation team for the Darfur conflict.

Dr de Waal received his PhD from Oxford University in 1988 and has written or edited thirteen books. Among them are, Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan, 1984-1985 (Clarendon Press, 1989); Facing Genocide: The Nuba of Sudan (African Rights, 1995); Food and Power in Sudan (African Rights, 1997); Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (James Currey, 1997); Demilitarizing the Mind: African Agendas for Peace and Security (Africa World Press, 2002); Islamism and Its Enemies in the Horn of Africa (Hurst 2004), AIDS and Power: Why There is No Political Crisis-Yet (Zed, 2006); War in Darfur and the Search for Peace (Harvard University Press 2007); and (with Julie Flint), Darfur: A New History of a Long War (revised edition, Zed, 2008).

Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal Africa Society and author of Africa. Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (2008). He first went to Africa in 1971 as a volunteer teacher in Idi Amin's Uganda, before being forced to leave at the end of 1972. He worked for the Times (London) from 1980, often reporting from Africa, until 1986 when he became Africa Editor of the Independent and in 1995 took up the post of Africa Editor at The Economist. He has also made several television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 on Africa and is an analyst and commentator on African issues.

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