Munzoul Assal

Anthropologist focusing on migration, refugees, internally displaced persons, and peace building.

Munzoul Assal is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Khartoum and currently a scholar at risk at Chr Michelsen Institute (CMI). He also holds the position of Professor II at the department of social anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. Prior to this he was the Director of the Mamoun Beheiry Centre for Economic and Social Studies in Africa (2015-2017), Director of the Peace Research Institute at the University of Khartoum (2018-2020), and Dean of Scientific Research (2021-2023). Assal was visiting professor at the universities of Paris 8 (2009) and Sharjah, UAE (2020-2021). His research focuses on migration, refugees, internally displaced persons and peace building. His books include Sticky labels and rich ambiguities: Somalis and Sudanese in Norway and the challenge of homemaking (2004), Diaspora within and without Africa: homogeneity, heterogeneity, variation (2006, coedited with Leif Manger), Ann annotated bibliography of social research on Darfur (2006), Multidimensional change in Sudan (1989-2011): reshaping livelihoods, conflicts and identities (2016, coedited with Barbara Casciarri and F Ireton), Fifty years of anthropology in Sudan: past, present and future (2015 coedited with Musa Abdul-Jalil), Borderlands dynamics in East Africa: cases from Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda (2019 coedited with Leif Manger et al). Assal was member of the Board of Trustees, the Arab Council for Social Sciences (2015-2023). In 2023 Assal was voted in as an honorary fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.