Now the Margaret Anstee Research Fellow at the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies, Newnham College, University of Cambridge, Dr. Cole held an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from Oxford, and a BA (Hons) in Geography from Trinity College, Cambridge, when she became Ockenden International’s second Junior Research Fellow.

She has previously taught on courses at the Refugee Studies Centre and the Department of Geography at the University of Oxford, and has an ongoing affiliation as a Research and Teaching Fellow at the College of Arts and Social Sciences in Eritrea.

She is a co-convenor of the Oxford Central Africa Forum, and previously Co-Editor in Chief of the Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration. She is also working on a project to provide a comparative analysis of the politics of the post-liberation trajectories of the Eritrean and Rwandan states, and ‘Engendering Understandings of Faith-Based Humanitarian Responses to Displacement: Intersections between gender and religion in humanitarian interventions’ with Dr. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Chloe Lewis.

Other interests include the position and importance of cycling in Eritrean politics. During her tenure as holder of the Joyce Pearce Junior Research Fellowship in Development Studies, she completed her DPhil in International Development on the topic of ‘The Politics and Semiotics of the Cessation Clauses for Rwandan and Eritrean Refugees’.

Kirsten McConnachie

Dr Kirsten McConnachie, the first Joyce Pearce Junior Research Fellow, went on to hold the position of Assistant Professor in law at the University of Warwick before moving to Norwich in 2018 where she is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of East Anglia.

Dr. McConnachie is also one of our trustees.