Addis Ababa University (AAU) is the oldest and biggest higher learning and research institution in Ethiopia. Established in 1950, AAU has been the leading centre in teaching-learning, research and community services in Ethiopia.
Roles/tasks in the project
AAU, in collaboration with the University of Leiden (ULEI) and BICC, will be a local lead institution in the empirical research on Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia. AAU will also review the shaping of Ethiopia’s policy and legal structure and contribute to solving protracted displacement situations in Ethiopia.
Team members involved in the project
Dr Fekadu Adugna Tufa
Dr Fekadu Adugna Tufa (co-ordinator) obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology from the Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Currently, he is Assistant Professor at Addis Ababa University, Department of Social Anthropology. His research areas of interest are migration, refugees, borderland, identity, conflict and conflict management, land deals, and pastoralism. He has published articles in peer-reviewed journals and contributed to edited volumes on migration, land and agricultural investment, conflict and conflict resolution and borderland studies. Dr Fekadu has been principal investigator and coordinator of a number of projects. Among others, he is currently coordinating, “Migration Out Of Poverty” in Ethiopia, funded by DFID, “Borderlands Dynamics in East Africa”, funded by NORAD and “Cross-border economy and centre-periphery relation” for Research Evidence Facility (REF) Project, a European Trust Fund Project.
Dr Tekalign Ayalew
Dr Tekalign Ayalew (researcher) obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University, Sweden. Currently, he is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the College of Social Sciences at Addis Ababa University. His research interests include refugee mobility, diaspora, migration industry, transnationalism, human smuggling, youth, health & wellbeing. He received the award for the best doctoral dissertation in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Stockholm University in 2018. His recent publications include: Struggle for Mobility: Risk, hope and the community of knowledge in Eritrean and Ethiopian migration pathways towards Sweden (2017); Refugee protections from bellow: smuggling in Eritrean and Ethiopian context (2018).
Mulu Getachew
Mulu Getachew (researcher) is pursuing her PhD in Social Anthropology at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. Her dissertation title is “Living in the face of uncertainty: the life of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia”. Mulu also wrote her MA thesis on “The Lived Experience of Eritrean Refugees: the case of Mai-Aini Refugee Camp in Tigray National Regional State”.