Susan Thomson
Five Colleges Professor, Hampshire College.
Last Contribution:
The Lasting Legacies of Rwanda's Genocide
Contributor Biography
Dr. Thomson is Five Colleges Professor at Hampshire College, Amherst. Ma and the author of the Democracy Watch - Rwanda 2010 blog.
She received her PhD in 2009 from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. She also holds an LLB from the University College London.
Dr. Thomson's research interests are in African Politics and Research Methodologies. Specifically, her work focuses on state-society relations in post-conflict societies. She studies individual strategies of everyday resistance to government policies in Africa, with emphasis on rural Rwanda. Her current research analyses political patronage networks in two urban slums in Nairobi, Kenya. She also studies interpretative, ethnographic, and narrative research methods, with particular focus on research ethics and doing research in difficult environments.
Dr. Thomson's work has been published in numerous journals, including the Canadian Journal of African Studies and Peace Review, and edited volumes, including Africa Yearbook: Politics, Economy and Society South of the Sahara and Surviving Field Research: Working In Violent and Difficult Situations. Her website can be found here.
Dr. Thomson is also the Rwanda and Burundi Country Specialist for Amnesty International - USA Section.
