Dr Sayra Van Den Berg
Postdoctoral Research Associate

Profile

Biography

I am a postdoctoral research associate at the Centre for the Comparative Study of Civil War at the University of York, conducting ethnographic research on the dynamics of civil war paths in Sub-Saharan African contexts with a current focus on South Sudan.

I hold a PhD in Politics, specialising in post-conflict transitional justice, from the University of Edinburgh. My PhD thesis examines the relationship between transitional justice and vulnerable populations, based on extensive fieldwork in Sierra Leone. My current research explores dynamics of conflict and peace in South Sudan that emerge through how conflict-affected individuals navigate lived experiences of successive civil wars and continuities of violence.

My interdisciplinary research is anchored in dignity as decolonial research method and explores the dialogics of embodied harm and hope in conflict-affected contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa. My work fuses decolonial approaches with arts-based research methods to illuminate invisible harms and challenge the inevitability of violence through a transitional justice orientation that centres issues of agency, affect and plurality. 

My research has been published in Conflict, Security and Development and the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. My work has been supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) at the University of Edinburgh and through the York Africa Research Network (ARN) at the University of York.

Research

Overview

My work investigates lived experiences of civil wars and contributes to developing a comparative framework for understanding civil war as a social process within the Civil War Paths project at the University of York. I centralise decolonial approaches that combine ethnography and arts-based research methods to access and deepen understandings of civil war trajectories. My interdisciplinary research draws on, and contributes to, the fields of conflict studies, transitional justice, memory studies, peacebuilding and peace and conflict studies more broadly.  My research area is Sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus currently on South Sudan.

Publications

Selected publications

Academic journal articles:

• van den Berg, S. (2023) ‘Untold Stories: Ex-Combatant Silences in Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, The Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, pp. 1-20, DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2022.2152617.
• van den Berg, S. (2022) ‘Between hope and expectation: understanding ordinary ex-combatant agency in Sierra Leone’s TRC’, Conflict, Security & Development, 22(2), pp. 119-141, DOI: 10.1080/14678802.2022.2059935.

Other publications:

• van den Berg, S., Adu-Ampong, E.A., and Mwambari, D. (2023) ‘Breaking the Silence on Colonial Crimes’ Review of African Political Economy, published September 14 2023. 

Recordings

• van den Berg, S. (2023) ‘Transitional Justice, Arts and Protest in South Sudan’ Justice Visions podcast miniseries, The Revolutionary Potential of Transitional Justice.