The trial of Thomas Kwoyelo: opportunity or spectre – a new paper by Anna Macdonald and Holly Porter

In this blog post, Anna Macdonald and Holly Porter examine the political and social dynamics that shape local perspectives on the first war crimes prosecution of a former Lord’s Resistance Army fighter, Thomas Kwoyelo. This week they published an open-access article in Africa, exploring these issues in depth, based on long-term research on the case since it began in 2009

Pursuing justice in northern Uganda #LSEreturn

Anna Macdonald and Holly Porter explore issues of justice, accountability and social repair in the context of postconflict northern Ugand

Popular life of Saint Teresa of Jesus

Copia digital : Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 201

Revisiting 'justice' in northern Uganda #LSEreturn

Two studies in the current issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies re-visit the fascinating debate about justice and reconciliation in northern Uganda, nearly ten years since the fighting between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU) stopped on Ugandan soil, as Anna Macdonald, Holly Porter and Letha Victor discuss in this article

Combining astrophysical datasets with CRUMB

At present, the field of astronomical machine learning lacks widely-used benchmarking datasets; most research employs custom-made datasets which are often not publicly released, making comparisons between models difficult. In this paper we present CRUMB, a publicly-available image dataset of Fanaroff-Riley galaxies constructed from four "parent" datasets extant in the literature. In addition to providing the largest image dataset of these galaxies, CRUMB uses a two-tier labelling system: a "basic" label for classification and a "complete" label which provides the original class labels used in the four parent datasets, allowing for disagreements in an image's class between different datasets to be preserved and selective access to sources from any desired combination of the parent datasets.Comment: Accepted in Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop at NeurIPS 2023; 6 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

The politics of return: Understanding trajectories of displacement and the complex dynamics of ‘return’ in Central and East Africa

By 2019, a record high of 79.5 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations (UNHCR 2020a: 2). In the decade leading up to this only a fraction of this number were able to 'return' or find a 'durable solution'. Multiple waves of displacement are common, and 'return' often involves far more complicated arrangements than the term suggests. Yet if 'return', as a one-directional durable solution is increasingly rare, the need to understand it in difficult and dynamic contexts of precarity and multi-directional mobility, is all the more urgent. This introductory essay reflects on what studies of return can tell us about the 'life cycle' of conflict and displacement dynamics in war-affected Central and East Africa, with particular focus on Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda. 'Return' and the 'returnee' category is broad and includes former combatants, especially those involved in non-state armed groups. We survey the historical and conceptual background of 'return' and its growing prominence in international policy before introducing four areas in which the articles in this special issue contribute to our understanding of internally displaced person, refugee and combatant return dynamics: conceptualizations of home and mobilities; everyday negotiation of belonging; the relationship between return and 'cycles of violence'; and finally, the ways in which return shapes and re-shapes governance and public authority across settings

Developing a questionnaire to explore people’s attitudes towards emotionally-driven prostheses: a pilot study

The literature shows that societies’ attitudes towards people with disabilities are negative, as a consequence of stigma. The design of the products (e.g. prostheses) can affect the attitudes of the people as products elicit emotions. However, research suggests that people have difficulties expressing their emotions. Therefore, the conduct of a pilot study, based on an interview-based survey questionnaire, was essential before conducting a full-study to test whether prostheses evoke emotions in non-prosthetic users (feasibility of study). The objectives were: to gain insights regarding aspects of the structure of the questionnaire; to examine whether people’s attitudes towards people with limb-loss can be affected by the design of prostheses; to identify whether people’s attraction towards prostheses can be affected by their level of emotionally-driven design; to investigate if prostheses can elicit emotions in non-prosthetic users, and; to explore if there is any relationship between the level of attractiveness and the emotions prostheses elicit. The findings cannot be considered as representative, since the sample was small (23 participants). However, they showed that prostheses elicited emotions in non-prosthetic users; the most frequently expressed emotions were sadness, admiration, and serenity. The level of emotional-design of prostheses appeared to affect the level of people’s attractiveness and implied the existence of a relationship with the emotions that were elicited. These findings highlighted the importance of conducting a full-study and suggested the existence of an opportunity for altering the negative perceptions towards people with limb-loss into positive ones through the design of prostheses

A survey of prosthetic preferences in the UK and Greece

People with limb loss are considered as disabled and they are stigmatised. However, the use of prostheses that express their identity has potential to change society’s opinion and eliminate stigmatisation. Using an online questionnaire, the aim of the study was to understand users’ preferences towards prostheses and whether culture affects them with the aim of designing more suitable prostheses for them. In order to investigate people’s preferences, with respect to cultural diversity, the study was conducted in the UK and Greece. There were 136 valid answers. The sample methods of the research are non-probability. Through the demographic and disability related variables that were tested, age and cause of limb loss appear to be independent of culture. The results present similarities between the two countries regarding the hierarchy of the preferences. However, the reasons for participants’ preferences towards prosthetic limbs significantly differ; in the UK people are concerned about identity, whilst in Greece the concern is for social reasons. Functional concerns constitute the most important issues to both countries