A light sandwich lunch is served at 12.50pm before the seminar.
South Sudan is once more at a critical moment in its history and the ways in which the international community responds to and analyses the drivers, causes and characteristics of its perpetual and protracted crises will have profound implications for the future stability of the country. The gendered nature of violence and the impact it has had on the militarization of livelihoods, social relations and the vulnerabilities of both men and women is a defining characteristic which needs to be factored in all aspects of future recovery and resilience programs. As the process towards forming a new transitional government slowly takes shape development and humanitarian stakeholders struggle to shape appropriate planning frameworks that can respond to a dynamic and volatile situation whilst simultaneously taking account of major human rights violations and community search for social justice.
Angela Raven-Roberts's career spans 30 years of work with NGOs, United Nations and academia in the Humanitarian sector. She worked for Oxfam America and Save the Children US as country representative in Ethiopia during 1985-1990 and UNICEF New York as Senior Program officer in the Office of Emergency Programs between 1991 and 1998 covering the Horn of Africa, Mozambique and Angola and again between 2004 and 2010 she was Chief of Emergencies for the UNICEF Regional office in Geneva covering East and Central Europe and Central Asia. In 1998 she took a leave of absence from UNICEF to join Tufts University as Director of Academic Programmes for the then newly formed Feinstein International Famine Centre. At Tufts, she oversaw the design of one of the first Master’s of Arts in Humanitarian Assistance (MAHA) degree in the USA, developed specialist courses on gender, culture and humanitarian assistance and spearheaded several successful humanitarian initiatives with MIT, Harvard and other universities.
Educated in the USA and United Kingdom, Dr Raven-Roberts holds a PhD in Anthropology and Development from the University of Minnesota, a Master’s degree in Social
Anthropology from Oxford University, and a Bachelor’s degree in African History and Social Anthropology from London University School of Oriental and African Studies.
She is currently a Research Associate at the Institute of Gender Studies at Lady Margaret Hall and Department of Education, Oxford working on capacity development specializing on the role of national civil services in disaster preparedness and reviewing current educational policies for pastoral communities in South Sudan and Ethiopia.
