Biography
Adam Branch is Professor in International Politics at the University of Cambridge. He is also the Director of the Philomathia Africa Programme as well as a Fellow of Trinity Hall. He received his PhD in political science from Columbia University and his BA from Harvard University. Prior to joining Cambridge, he was senior research fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala. He is a member of the Vice Chancellor’s Advisory Group on the Legacies of Enslavement at Cambridge and is a series editor for African Arguments (Zed Books).
Research
Adam’s research focuses on international politics, specifically around questions of political violence, intervention, and justice, with a regional focus on East Africa. His current agenda explores the politics of global climate change and climate justice, specifically through the lens of the political ecology of charcoal as a key energy source, driver of deforestation, and object of adaptation and mitigation interventions. He has worked extensively on the politics of human rights intervention, peacebuilding, and the International Criminal Court, in particular in Uganda, which culminated in his first book, Displacing Human Rights: War and Intervention in Northern Uganda (Oxford University Press, 2011). He has also written on popular protest and social movements in his second book, Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change (Zed Books, 2015, co-authored with Zachariah Mampilly). Finally, he is interested in debates around the politics of knowledge production on Africa and possibilities for the decolonization of African Studies. His research has been funded by the AHRC, ESRC, GCRF, and the British Academy.
Publications
"Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change" (Zed Books, 2015; co-written with Zachariah Mampilly)
"Displacing Human Rights: War and Intervention in Northern Uganda" (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Charcoal Power: The Political Violence of Non-Fossil Fuel in Uganda. 2018. Geoforum. Vol. 97: 242-252.
The African Criminal Court: Towards an Emancipatory Politics. 2019. In The African Court of Justice and Human and People’s Rights in Context, edited by C. Jalloh, K. Clarke and V. Nmehielle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Decolonizing the African Studies Centre. 2018. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology. 36:2.
From Disaster to Devastation: Drought as War in Northern Uganda. 2018. Disasters. 42:S2, 306-327.
Dominic Ongwen on Trial: The ICC’s African Dilemmas. 2017. International Journal of Transitional Justice 11:1.
Neoliberal discipline and violence in northern Uganda, co-authored with Adrian Yen. 2018. In Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation, edited by Jörg Wiegratz, Giuliano Martiniello and Elisa Greco (London: Zed Books).
The Violence of Peace: Ethnojustice in Northern Uganda. 2014. Development and Change 45:3. (Included in Transitional Justice, ed. Christine Bell, Ashgate, 2015)
The Responsibility to Protect and Africa’s International Relations. Handbook of Africa’s International Relations, edited by Tim Murithi (Routledge, 2013).
Gulu in War ... and Peace? The Town as Camp in Northern Uganda. 2013. Urban Studies 50:15.
The Paradoxes of Protection: Aligning against the Lord’s Resistance Army. 2012. African Security 5:3-4.
The Role of the ICC in Northern Uganda. In Peacemaking: From Practice to Theory, edited by Andrea Bartoli, Zachariah Mampilly, and Susan Allen Nan (Praeger, 2011).
Neither Liberal nor Peaceful? Practices of ‘Global Justice’ by the ICC. In A Liberal Peace? The Problems and Practices of Peacebuilding, edited by Susanna Campbell, David Chandler and Meera Sabaratnam (Zed Books, 2011).
The Irresponsibility of the Responsibility to Protect in Africa. In Critical Perspectives on the Responsibility to Protect: Interrogating Theory and Practice, edited by Philip Cunliffe (Routledge, 2011).
The Roots of LRA Violence: Political Crisis and Politicized Ethnicity in Acholiland. In The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality, edited by Tim Allen and Koen Vlassenroot (Zed Books, 2010).
Humanitarianism, Violence, and the Camp in Northern Uganda. 2009. Civil Wars 11:4.
Against Humanitarian Impunity: Rethinking Responsibility for Displacement and Disaster in Northern Uganda. 2008. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 2:2.
Uganda’s Civil War and the Politics of ICC Intervention. 2007. Ethics and International Affairs 21:2. (Excerpted in International and Transnational Criminal Law Casebook [Aspen Publishers, 2014]. Winner, Morton Deutsch Award for Social Justice, Columbia University.)
American Morality over International Law: Origins in UN Military Interventions, 1991-1995. 2005. Constellations 12:1.
Neither Peace nor Justice: Political Violence and the Peasantry in Northern Uganda, 1986-1998. 2005. African Studies Quarterly 8:2.
Winning the War but Losing the Peace? The Dilemma of SPLM/A Civil Administration and the Tasks Ahead. 2005. Journal of Modern African Studies 43:1. Co-written with Zachariah Mampilly.
Teaching and Supervisions
Adam is the course organizer and primary lecturer for POL2, International Conflict, Order and Justice, a required first-year undergraduate lecture class. He is also Course Director for the MPhil in African Studies and the convener of the interdisciplinary core course. He currently has eight PhD students: Michael Onyebuchi Eze (fourth-year); Surer Mohamed and Liana Minkova (third-year); Mamasa Camara, Anye Nyamnjoh, and Rachel Sittoni (second-year); and Rumbidzai Dube and Lyn Kouadio (first-year).
