On March 5, 2023, Judy Adoko, an intellectual, thinker, mentor, activist, and founding director of the Land and Equity Movement in Uganda (LEMU) rested. March 5, 2025 will mark the second anniversary of her untimely
departure, and it is on this day that her inaugural memorial lecture will be held. Judy was much known for her indelible, intelligible and insistent fight for the protection of customary land tenure in Uganda and across the continent through her activist work and her writings.

The journey since Judy’s passing has been filled with internal conversations and questions on the best way we can celebrate and think of/with her beyond activism. For Judy was, above all else, a critical thinker, and her activism was anchored on it. How can we best celebrate an icon who was not only an activist but also a critical thinker who has been instrumental in shaping contemporary discourse on customary land? This was a key question we have had to address. After thorough considerations and deliberations by LEMU’s Core Team of the Working Group on Land and Agrarian Questions in July 2024, it was resolved that an annual Memorial Lecture and workshop would be the best option for such an uphill task.

This would allow us a chance to account for Judy’s activist work in the land sector in Uganda and to take seriously Judy’s intellectual contribution to the question of customary tenure and the larger land question in Africa. Judy Adoko’s contribution can only be made sense of if we engage the kinds of questions she was asking for 20 years, between 2003 and 2023, when she deliberated on customary land and agrarian questions in Uganda. The memorial lecture will be offered by Prof. Mahmood Mamdani.

Download Public Announcement for Judy Adoko Memorial Lecture