In episode 3 of our interview series, “African Voices,” Alex de Waal speaks with South Sudanese scholar and activist, Jok Madut Jok on race and liberation in South Sudan.
Jok is a Professsor of Anthropology at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University. His areas of specialization include security, governance, democracy and development in South Sudan and Sudan. He has also written extensively about gender, sexuality and reproductive health, humanitarian aid, ethnography of political violence, gender-based violence, and war and slavery and the politics of identity in South Sudan and Sudan.
He is the author of “Breaking Sudan: The Search for Peace” (Oneworld Publications, 2017), “Sudan: Race, Religion and Violence” (One World Publication, 2007), “War and Slavery in Sudan” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), and “Militarization, Gender and Reproductive Health in South Sudan” (Edwin Mellen Press, 1998). He also co-authored “The Sudan Handbook” (co-edited with J. Willis, J. Ryle and S. Baldo, James Currey, 2011).
Before joining Maxwell he was visiting professor of anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Linacre College. He also served in the government of South Sudan as undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, 2010-13. He is the founding director of the Sudd Institute, a public policy research center.
