Dr Victoria Araj & Dr Pamela Nzabampema: Celebrating Black Peace Activism

Dr. Victoria Araj is a Post-doctoral Researcher with the Reimagining Lincolnshire project at the University of Lincoln. This public history project was initiated at the University of Lincoln in late 2020 and seeks to uncover hidden and neglected stories from Lincolnshire. The project addresses the complexities of both empire and slavery but is also about uncovering additional layers of marginalised stories relating to race, class, gender, sexuality and ableism, thus revealing the past in a more inclusive and thought-provoking light.

Victoria holds a PhD in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford, UK and a Masters and BA in International Development: Poverty, Conflict, and Reconstruction from the University of Manchester. Previously, she was a visiting Fellow in Sustainable Peacebuilding at Sabanci University in Istanbul and with the European Commission. She is currently a mentor with the Women in International Affairs Network.

Outside academia Victoria has worked with Carnegie Middle East Center, Cambridge Centre for Palestine Studies and also with UK and Turkey-based refugee and peace-education charities.

Dr Pamela Nzabampema works at the Quaker Council for European Affairs, based in Brussels. Prior to joining QCEA, Pamela completed a doctoral degree in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. Her PhD examined the historical and contemporary developments of policing pluralism in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In this research, Pamela took a historicised and a nodal governance approach to examine the developments of a number of policing providers beyond the state in the DRC. Pamela has also carried out research on the impact of amnesties on the reconciliation process in post-conflict Burundi. She previously worked as a General Teaching Assistant at the University of Bradford and as a Research Associate for the John and Eleanora Ferguson Centre for African Studies (JEFCAS).