From 20 to 31 January 2014, Faculty Lecturer Dr Sarah Nouwen returned to Uganda to give her recently published book Complementarity in the Line of Fire "back" to the hundreds of people whom she had interviewed.
Much legal research often ends up close to its sources, for instance in libraries and databases. But with qualitative empirical research across borders it is more difficult to guarantee that sources have access to the findings. Indeed, when Sarah Nouwen for the first time interviewed people in northern Uganda, a respondent asked whether she was "yet another student earning a PhD on our backs": hundreds of researchers have gone to northern Uganda without ever returning the findings.
Six years after that first visit, Nouwen returned to Uganda with a free copy of her book for many of the people whom she had interviewed between 2008 and 2014. The book was also publicly launched and discussed in three Ugandan cities key to the research: Gulu, Kitgum, and Kampala. These discussions not only facilitated accountability - they also provided a fertile ground for future research questions.
Nouwen's return was made possible by a generous grant from the University's School of Humanities and Social Sciences. In Uganda, she was hosted by the Refugee Law Project.
Further images are available below: