In our first episode, our guest Dr. Nafisa Abdulhamid, Network Coordinator for the Research Network on Women, Peace and Security (RN-WPS), discusses her recently completed PhD dissertation work on the extent to which civilian protection norms have been sustained, adapted, and localization in the African Union and within the African Union Mission in Somalia. Her dissertation can be accessed here via Dalspace: https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/handle/10222/80685

Nafisa hopes to conduct research in meaningful ways that will continue to tell the untold, and often forgotten, stories of individuals and communities so that her findings can positively impact policy changes on intervention practices that will actually protect civilians. She has published several books and articles on human security, gender and development, and civilian protection. Her most recent publications include “Commercialized Micro-Credit: How Micro-Borrowing Betrayed the Poor” (2019); “Disruptive Technology, Mobile Money and Financial Mobilization in Africa: MPesa as Kenya’s Solution to Global Financial Exclusion?” (2020); and “Offshoring in the pandemic age: Europe and the reconfiguration of externalized border controls” (2021). Nafisa also holds a Bachelor of Arts (honors) and a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Alberta. Despite being professionally rooted in Canada, Nafisa maintains strong connections with her community in Mombasa, Kenya.