“Re-serch: A Workshop Exploring the Notion of Research as Theory, Practice, and Identitiy”

Gerawork Teferra Gizaw holds a Master's degree in Development Economics and has completed the Global History Lab and the History Dialogue Project. He is an honorary research fellow in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of Exeter. His research interests include refugee lives, refugee camp education, and refugee hospitality.

Muna Omar is a researcher and author whose work focuses on leadership, migration, and the experiences of communities impacted by conflict and displacement. Through her participation in Princeton University’s Global History and History Dialogues programs, she later went on to serve as a Guest Lecturer at the University of Potsdam. She has published in the peer-reviewed journal Africa Today (Indiana University Press, U.S.) and contributed a chapter to The Right to Research (McGill‑Queen’s University Press, Canada). Her work offers scholarly insight into resilience, community leadership, and global social challenges.

Dyoniz Kindata is a binational PhD candidate at Sorbonne University Paris III and Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. His doctoral research, titled “Poetic and Photographic Practices in the  Kiongozi Newspaper in German East Africa (1885–1918),” explores the intersections of literary and visual culture in the colonial press.

Oduor Obura has research interests in cultural studies in eastern Africa. His research focuses on an intersection of archives, anthropology, literary and decolonial studies. He uses a multidisciplinary approach towards his textual analyses, ranging from historical and locally-situated indigenous knowledge practices to current expressions of agency in digital spaces.

Cassandra Mark-Thiesen is currently serving as Acting Chair of Transregional Cultures of Knowledge at DIMAS. She previously led the junior research group 'African Knowledges and the History of Publication' at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth. She was also a lecturer in global and African history at the University of Basel. Her research focuses on the social history of labor, technology, and knowledge transfer in the 19th and 20th centuries; media archaeology; and African historical cultures.

Aime Parfait Emerusenge is one of the refugee contributors to the “Right to Research, Historical Narratives by Refugee and Global South Researchers” anthology. As a Burundian refugee, his current work “Trapped Burundian Youth: Facing Prejudice and Bias in Historical Research on Post-independence Burundi” in collaboration with Richesse Ndiritiro confirms his commitment to bringing the stories of marginalized groups to light.  

Richesse is a Burundian refugee who has been living in Rwanda since 2015, with a degree in Healthcare Management with a concentration in Global Perspective from Southern New Hampshire University. In addition, as a forced-migration activist and a member of the Student Engagement Task Force for Connected Learning in Higher Education, his activism work focuses on research-informed advocacy addressing access to and quality of higher education for refugees, in alignment with UNHCR’s 15 by 30 target.  Lastly, as a Global History Lab alumnus, his research interests explore the impact of forced migration on identity, culture, and belonging as well as the emerging changes in migration policies in the Global North and the influence of childhood lived experience in the Global South and its correlation to movement toward the Global North.