Team
The Sudanese Programme is managed and overseen by:
Co-Founder and Chair of Trustees: Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi
Co-Founder and Trustee: Anis Haggar
Director for Initiatives: Dr Richard Barltrop
Trustee: Makol Bona Malwal
Trustee: Dr Noon Altijani
Trustee: Elhag Paul
Trustee: Professor Laurent Mignon
Capabilities
The Programme has diverse links in South Sudan and Sudan, with diaspora from both countries, and with the fields of policy, practice and research internationally. It combines this with expertise in dialogue facilitation, mediation and research.
Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi co-founded the Sudanese Programme in 2002. He has been closely connected with Sudan and South Sudan for more than 50 years, teaching students from both countries and internationally, and encouraging the use of conferences, dialogue, discussion and education to promote knowledge, understanding and peaceful coexistence among the peoples of South Sudan and Sudan. Ahmed is a social anthropologist whose main research interests are in economic and social development, sectarian politics, social differentiation and oral tradition. He has taught social anthropology at the universities of Khartoum, Newcastle upon Tyne and Oxford. After retirement in 1996, he became a Research Fellow of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and he continues to be an Associate Member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. His publications include “Pluralism and Governance in Sudan: Reflections on the Local and National Perspectives” in Assal and Abdul-Jalil, eds., Past, Present and Future: Fifty Years of Anthropology in Sudan (CMI, 2015), and (ed.) The Diversity of the Muslim Community: Anthropological Essays in Memory of Peter Lienhardt (Ithaca Press, 1987).
Anis G. Haggar co-founded the Sudanese Programme in 2002. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Haggar Foundation. Established in Sudan in 1988, the Haggar Foundation is a not-for-profit company committed to supporting communities in South Sudan and Sudan in the fields of education, literacy, capacity building, healthcare and clean water, research, the arts, culture and sports. A strong supporter of efforts to advance dialogue and peace in South Sudan and Sudan, Anis has honorary doctorates from Ahfad University, Juba University and Sudan University.
Dr Richard Barltrop is Director for Initiatives for the Sudanese Programme. He is an expert on dialogue, mediation, peace processes and peacebuilding, drawing on his extensive experience in international responses to conflicts and humanitarian crises, and related research. Over the past 25 years he has worked widely for the UN Development Programme in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, including in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen. He has also worked for the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, the UN Refugee Agency, and peacebuilding and conflict resolution NGOs. Richard is a visiting senior fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His publications on South Sudan and Sudan include “Sudan’s Current War: A Longer View on Peacemaking and Prospects” (LSE, 2026); and Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan (IB Tauris, 2010/2015). He has a doctorate in International Relations and a masters in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford, and was a visiting fellow at Durham University in 2015. He has been involved with the Sudanese Programme since the 2000s, and has worked and lived in South Sudan and Sudan in various periods since first visiting Sudan in 1995.