The Core (Research) Working Group

Theresa Auma is a Ugandan scholar and social activist. Theresa has a vast experience in the NGO sector in Uganda, working with the land sector. She is the current Executive Director of Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU), an NGO whose work is focused on the recognition and protection of customary land rights. As a land expert, she has also offered expert services as a consultant to international organizations, focusing on diverse topics such as promoting responsible investments in land, protection of community lands and resources.

In terms of academic pursuits, she recently completed her Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University. Since January 2024, she has been a research consultant with the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). She holds a PhD in Social Studies from Makerere University and her doctoral thesis is titled: “Customary Resistance to Marketization of Land: Lango clans in northern Uganda”. Her academic research interest spans issues around neoliberal market transitions, the land question and agrarian questions around social reproduction under capitalism.

Adventino Banjwa is a Ugandan Doctoral Fellow on the Interdisciplinary MPhil. /Ph.D. Programme in Social Studies at the Makerere  Institute of Social Research (MISR), of Makerere University.

Between 2013 and 2014, Adventino worked with Caritas (Lugazi Diocese) in Monitoring and Social Advocacy. Prior to his current interdisciplinary studies, from which he received an Interdisciplinary MPhil. in Social Studies of Makerere University (2021), he had trained majorly in Political Economy, with an undergraduate Degree in Development Studies of Makerere University (2013).

He was a recipient of a two-year Swedish Institute study scholarship (2014/2016), out of which he obtained an Interdisciplinary MSc. in Development Studies of Lunds Universitet (2017). Adventino’s current doctoral dissertation at MISR, whose completion is underway, broadly draws on interdisciplinary approaches to interrogate federalist contestations of the postcolonial state in Uganda. He is a recipient of the SSRC NextGen Research Fellowship (2022) and the HFG Foundation’s African Fellowship (2023).

His research interests broadly encompass questions emerging from thematic fields of ‘Development’, ‘African history’, ‘Colonialism’, ‘The postcolonial state’, ‘Postcolonialism’, and ‘Decolonization’. Adventino currently serves as the Chair of Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU)’s Working Group on Land and Agrarian Questions. Some of his publications can be read through: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4773-9489

Samuel Nyende is an MPhil/PhD Fellow at Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University. Before joining the MISR MPhil/PhD programme, he served as a Lecturer in the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi.

Samuel holds a degree of the International Master in Adult Education for Social Change of the University of Glasgow, a Master of Research and Public Policy, and a Bachelor of Social Development and Counselling of Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi. He currently also serves as the General Secretary of Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU)'s Working Group on Land and Agrarian Questions.

His academic research interests are: land and agrarian questions, politics of peasant movements, agrarian transformations and agrarian struggles, decolonisation, and higher education. In November 2014, he won the Jane Namakula Kintu award, given to the overall best student, graduating with first class honours in the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Uganda Martyrs University.