Dr Holly Porter
- Associate Professor of Gender Studies
- University Teaching Officer
Contact
Location
- Department of Politics and International Studies
- University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, The Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP
About
Holly Porter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies in the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies. An anthropologist focusing on Africa, her work centres around issues of gender, sexualities, violence, and local notions of healing and justice after war—particularly in northern Uganda where she has lived for more than ten years. Previously, she has worked in South Sudan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Azerbaijan, and Palestine in the fields of access to justice, gender-based violence, transitional justice, peacebuilding and human rights. Prior to coming to Cambridge, she has held positions at the London School of Economics, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the University of Antwerp and Gent University. She is the author of many articles and the 2018 Herskovitz Book Prize finalist, After rape: violence justice and social harmony in Uganda, published by Cambridge University Press.
Research
Research interests
- Gender
- Wartime Sexual Violence
- Sexualities
- Local notions of healing and justice after war
Gender, sexualities, intimate relationships, violence, and local notions of healing and justice after war.
Key publications:
Book
- Porter, Holly. 2017. After rape: violence, justice and social harmony in Uganda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Articles
- Porter, Holly. 2025. Rebel Sex: male combatants and desire in coercive circumstances.
- Porter, Holly. 2025. Babies, buildings, and bones: the (im)materiality of love and homemaking. Journal of Eastern African Studies.
- Porter, H. (2025). In Love and at War: by Hilary Matfess, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2024, 66 pp., £18 (paperback), ISBN 9781009358859. Civil Wars, 1–4.
- Tom Kirk, Duncan Green, Holly Porter, et.al. 2021. Crisis Responses, Opportunity, and Public Authority During Covid-19’s First Wave in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan. Disasters. 45(SI): 195-215.
- Macdonald, Anna and Holly Porter. 2020. The Politics of Return: Understanding Trajectories of Displacement and the Complex Dynamics of ‘Return’ in Central Africa. Journal of Refugee Studies. Volume 33, Issue 4: 639–662.
- Porter, Holly. 2020. Moving Toward 'Home': Love and Relationships Through War and Displacement. Journal of Refugee Studies.
- Porter, Holly. 2019. Naked Bodies and Collective Action: Repertoires of Protest in Uganda’s Militarised, Authoritarian Regime. Civil Wars. 22(3): 198-223.
- Porter, Holly. 2019. Moral Spaces and Sexual Transgression: Understanding rape in war and post-conflict. Development and Change.
- Porter, Holly 2018. Rape Without Bodies?: Reimagining the phenomenon we call “rape.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 25(4): 589-612.
- Hilhorst, Dorothea, Holly Porter and Rachel Gordon. 2018. Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Humanitarian Crises. Disasters 42(S1): S3-S16.
- Hopwood, Julian, Holly Porter and Nangiro Saum. 2018. Resilient Patriarchy: Public authority and women’s (in)security in Karamoja, Uganda. Disasters 42 (S1): S140-S158.
- Porter, Holly and Letha Victor. 2017. Dirty Things: spiritual pollution and life after the Lord’s Resistance Army, Journal of Eastern African Studies.
- Macdonald, Anna and Holly Porter. 2016. The trial of Thomas Kwoyelo: opportunity or spectre? Reflections from the ground on the first LRA prosecution. Africa. 86 (4): 698-722.
- Porter, Holly. 2015. After rape: Comparing civilian and combatant perpetrated crime in northern Uganda. Women’s Studies International Forum. 51 (2015): 81-90.
- Porter, Holly. 2015. ‘Say no to bad touches’: Schools, sexual identity and sexual violence in northern Uganda. International Journal of Educational Development. 41 (1): 271-281.
- Porter, Holly. 2015. Mango trees, offices and altars: The role of relatives, NGOs and churches after rape in northern Uganda. International Journal for Minority and Group Rights. 22 (3): 309-334.
- Porter, Holly. 2012. Justice and rape on the periphery: The supremacy of social harmony in the space between local solutions and formal judicial systems in northern Uganda. Journal of Eastern African Studies. 6 (1): 81-97.
Teaching and supervision
Holly teaches for the MPhil and PhD in Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies including: Gender Theory and Controversy; Theorising Gender and Method; Multi-disciplinary Text Seminar; Multi-disciplinary Gender Research Seminar.