PhD At Risk successfully defends her thesis

On 15 June 2025, Asma Ibrahim H. Mohamed successfully defended her PhD thesis 'Kanabi of the Gezira scheme: Conflict over resources and issues of social integration: The case of el- Kamlin locality'.

This is the first PhD thesis to tackle the issue of kanabi (a local vernacular for camps) in the Gezira scheme in central Sudan. These are villages of wage laborers who settled in the scheme for over seventy years, without the right to own farm and residential lands, creating what could be termed as 'landlessness' for generations of people who were born and lived all their lives in the scheme. The question of the kanabi became a contentious issue after the ousting of Omer al-Bashir in 2019. As the Islamist regime fell, the inhabitants of the kanabi used their newfound freedom of expression to organise themselves in what came to be called 'The Kanabi Conference' and campaigned for their rights. The April 2023 war has stalled their campaign. The thesis is a rich description of the kanabi people and a timely contribution to Sudan scholarship.

Asma Ibrahim H. Mohamed is one of three Sudanese scholars – two historians and an anthropologist -  awarded a PhD at Risk Fellowship by the Sudan-Norway Academic Cooperation (SNAC), and she is the first to complete her PhD thesis. Originally planned for PhD students in Sudan, the war forced through changes and a decision was made to award fellowships to PhD students who had been displaced.