Research

Searching for a Somali solution

A research student in the Department of Sociology has published a report advising whether refugees from the troubled African state Somalia should be repatriated.

Ana Ljubinkovic has spent time in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya conducting the research for CARE International. Her report, Is Hope the Last to Die? investigates how Somali refugees are planning for their futures and whether they want to return to Somalia once the state is rehabilitated.

Somalia has been in a state of turmoil since the outbreak of civil war in 1991. Over 100,000 refugees have been living in the Kenyan camps for well over a decade. While many are eager to return home, news of prolonged fighting makes it difficult for them to make firm plans. Ana interviewed refugees about their attitudes towards voluntary repatriation.

Ana Ljubinkovic (centre) in Dadaab

Ana explained: 'The main aim of the project was to capture and analyze the differences between the attitudes of women, youths and the elderly towards their future destination and activity. Within each of these three categories I focused on further sub-groups, for instance, those who are educated and those who are not.'

Ana concludes her report with a number of recommendations regarding the destinations of the refugees and their future activities: 'Many refugees sustained trauma in Somalia and should not be repatriated without full and professional psychological support. It is also important that Somali youth are prepared for the challenges of the post-conflict situation and how to rebuild their country. The possibility of integration into Kenyan also needs to be investigated.

'Also key to repatriation is education. All of the interviewed groups expressed a desire to improve their skills however many, especially women, do not attend courses currently provided by CARE so we need to reach out to these more passive groups.'

Ana, who is a member of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, an international group of academics and practitioners, is also completing a second report, on behalf of the UNOCHA, on the attitudes of Somali refugees towards potential military humanitarian intervention in their home country.

Witches were men too

The Department of History’s specialist in the history of witch trials is organising a conference which will take a fresh look at why so many men were accused of witchcraft in the early modern world.

Dr Alison Rowlands, who is co-organising the conference with Jenni Grundy, a doctoral student in the Department, explained: 'Ask most people to describe what they imagine to have been the 'typical' victim of the witch hunts that took place in Europe between around 1450 and 1750 and they will reply “a woman, usually old, poor and unmarried”. However, in reality an average of 20 to 25 per cent of all of those who were tried and executed for the crime during this period were men.'

The Devil re-baptising a male witch, from Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum, 1610 edition

'This fact has remained neglected and unexplored within a historiography of witch persecution and witchcraft that has been shaped since the 1970s by second-wave feminism: the feminist agenda has, unsurprisingly, encouraged concentration almost exclusively on the question of why witches were women.'

The Witchcraft and Masculinities in the Early Modern World conference will take place on campus between 21 and 23 April. It will explore not only why men were accused of witchcraft in significant numbers, but also broader questions of how beliefs about witchcraft and both black and white magic were gendered in the early modern period.

Speakers will be attending from around the world and the event is being sponsored by the British Academy and the Department. A postgraduate bursary has also been provided by the Gender and History journal.

Also in the printed March edition of Wyvern:

• Bookshelf
• Investigating service industries