Luka Biong Deng Kuol was an External Associate at PRIO until 2022.
Email: lukabiongdeng@gmail.com
Website: africacenter.org/experts/luka-kuol/
PRIO Global Fellow 2014-2022.
Luka Biong Deng Kuol (PhD) is the Acting Dean and a Professor of Practice at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) at US National Defense University in Washington and a faculty lead of three academic programs: National Security Strategy Development (NSSD) in Africa, Managing Security Resources in Africa (MSRA) and Emerging Security Sector Leaders (ESSL) in Africa. He is also Associate Professor of economics at University of Juba, South Sudan, a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and a fellow at Rift Valley Institute. He was a resident fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, former director of Institute for Peace, Development and Security Studies at University of Juba. He served as a minister of presidency of Southern Sudan and a national minister of Cabinet Affairs of Sudan during the 2005 Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement until he resigned in 2011. He also worked as a member of teaching staff at the Faculty of Economics and Rural Development at the University of Gezira, Sudan, a senior economist for the World Bank in Southern Sudan and a founding member of the New Sudan Center for Statistics and Evaluation (currently South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics). He received his PhD from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, UK and earned a Master of Arts in Economics and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and Bachelor of Science from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Khartoum, Sudan. He has published scholarly articles in a wide array of prestigious international journals and contributed with many peer-reviewed chapters in various books. He is a co-editor of a book entitled The Struggle for South Sudan: Challenges of Security and State Formation and co-editor of a book entitled Abyei: Between Two Sudans. He serves as a member of editorial board of Disasters journal.
Journal Article in Texas National Security Review
Monograph
Report - Other
Journal Article in International Relations and Diplomacy
Monograph
Popular Article in The Conversation
Popular Article in Africa Center for Strategic Studies
Report - Other
Edited Volume
Book Chapter in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies
PRIO Global Fellow Luka Biong Deng Kuol and Sarah Logan of the London School of Economics and Political Science have released a new book on South Sudan titled The Struggle for South Sudan: Challenges of Security and State Formation. The book is an edited collection of articles by various scholars on the politics of the world’s youngest nation, providing insightful analysis of the country’s road to independence and the challenge it is facing since.
PRIO Global Fellow Dr. Luka Biong Deng is visiting PRIO this week. He is the director of the Centre for Peace and Development Studies, University of Juba, South Sudan. Dr. Luka Biong Deng is one of South Sudan's leading political commentators.
He is also the Executive Director of Kush Inc., a South Sudanese non-profit organization building bridges between the international community and local African initiatives with focus on South Sudan and Abyei. He was appointed a PRIO Global Fellow in 2014.
Abstract:
Over the 50 years between 1940 and 1990, the countries of eastern Africa were embroiled in a range of debilitating and destructive conflicts, starting with the wars of independence, but then incorporating rebellion, secession and local insurrection as the Cold War replaced colonialism. The articles gathered here illustrate how significant, widespread and dramatic this violence was. In these years, violence was used as a principal instrument in the creation and consolidation of the authority of the state, and it was also regularly and readily utilised by those who wished to challenge state authority through insurrection and secession. Why was it that eastern Africa should have experienced such extensive and intensive violence in the 50 years before 1990? Was this resort to violence a consequence of imperial rule, the legacy of oppressive colonial domination under a coercive and non-representative state system? Did essential contingencies such as the Cold War provoke and promote the use of violence? Or was it a choice made by Africans themselves and their leaders, a product of their own agency? This article focuses on these turbulent decades, exploring the principal conflicts in six key countries – Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Tanzania.
The Research Council of Norway (RCN) funds two PRIO projects on the effects of aid: “Conflict of Interest? ‘Business For Peace’ as Development Aid in Volatile Environments” and “Aid in Crisis? Rights-Based Approaches and Humanitarian Outcomes”.