Ms. Hala Al-Karib is the Regional Director of SIHA, an organization established in 1995 by a coalition of women’s rights activists with the aim of strengthening the capacities of women’s rights organizations and addressing women’s subordination and violence against women and girls in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHoA). She is also the editorial head of the SIHA annual journal ‘Women in Islam’, an annual journal published by SIHA that focuses on gender relations and women’s rights within Muslim communities in the GHoA. She often writes on women’s rights and social justice issues and the politics of the region for media outlets such as OpenDemocracy, Al Jazeera and The New Humanitarian Pambazuka and The East African. Prior to joining SIHA network, Ms. Al-Karib studied Human Rights, Women Studies and Psychology, and worked as a Research Assistant for the College of Social & Economic Studies of Juba University in South Sudan and as an Assistant Researcher for the Sociology Department at the American University in Cairo. While living in Canada, she worked for Open Door Society Refugee Agency in Regina and as a Program Director for the International Women of Saskatoon. She has also previously worked as a Grant Officer for Irish organization Trócaire and other international and regional organizations. Ms. Al-Karib is a board member of Musawah, a global movement working on reforming Muslim family law, and she is a fellow with the Rift Valley Institute.
Michael Woldemariam is an associate professor of International Relations at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies. He also serves on BU’s graduate faculty of Political Science and is a faculty affiliate at the African Studies Center. He previously worked as a research specialist with Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies program, and held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC and Penn State’s Africana Research Center. Woldemariam’s teaching and research interests are in African security studies, with a particular focus on armed conflict in the Horn of Africa. Woldemariam’s scholarly work has been published in the journals Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Terrorism and Political Violence, Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Journal of Eastern African Studies. His popular essays have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Current History. His first book, Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and Its Discontents, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2018. In addition to his scholarly work, Woldemariam has consulted with a wide variety of international organizations, primarily on issues related to politics, governance, and security in the Greater Horn of Africa region.
Professor Woldemariam’s areas of expertise include comparative politics, international security, African politics, Horn of Africa, political violence and conflict, post-conflict governance and institution building, and identity politics.