Staff Profile
Dr Cherry Leonardi
Contact Dr Cherry Leonardi (email at d.c.leonardi@durham.ac.uk)
Cherry Leonardi specialises in African history with a particular research focus on South Sudan. Her forthcoming book Dealing with Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State (James Currey, forthcoming: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=14224) is the result of a doctoral and postdoctoral research project funded by the AHRC, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Institute in Eastern Africa and the British Academy. In 2010 she held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and in 2009-10 she was the lead researcher and author of a report on local justice in South Sudan for the US Institute of Peace and the Rift Valley Institute. Her current and future research projects focus on the themes of borders, witchcraft and the changing value of land and livestock in South Sudan.
Cherry welcomes enquiries from students and researchers about Sudanese history and other topics in African history including colonial governance, local and traditional authority, armed conflict, customary justice, and boundaries and borderlands. Her research on Sudan benefits from the extensive Sudan Archive in Durham, which is also an excellent resource for undergraduate and postgraduate research. She maintains active links with academic and non-academic bodies working in or on Sudan.
Related Links
Publications
Essays in edited volumes
- 2011 (co-authored with Abdul Jalil, Musa) 'Traditional authority, local government and justice', in Ryle, John, Willis, Justin, Baldo, Suliman & Jok Madut Jok (eds.), The Sudan Handbook, James Currey, pp. 108-121
Journal papers: academic
- 2011 'Paying 'buckets of blood' for the land: moral debates over economy, war and state in Southern Sudan', Journal of Modern African Studies 49, pp. 215-240
- 2011 (co-authored with Isser, Deborah, Moro, Leben & Santschi, Martina) 'The politics of customary law ascertainment in South Sudan', Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 63, pp. 111-142
- 2009 'Local justice and power of an official nature in Southern Sudan', Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals 87, pp. 65-93
- 2007 ''Liberation' or Capture? Youth in between 'hakuma' and 'home' during civil war and its aftermath in Southern Sudan', African Affairs 106, pp. 391-412
- 2007 'The Poison in the Ink Bottle: Poison cases and the moral economy of knowledge in 1930s Equatoria, Sudan', Journal of Eastern African Studies 1, pp. 34-56
- 2007 'Violence, sacrifice and chiefship in Central Equatoria, Southern Sudan', Africa 77, pp. 535-558
- 2003 'Laying the first course of stones: building the London Missionary Society Church in Madagascar, 1862-1895', International Journal of African Historical Studies 3, pp. 607-633