AVReQ proudly celebrates Dr Akuch Kuol Anyieth, who has been recognised among the Top 7 Postdoctoral Research Fellows at the 2025 Research and Innovation Excellence Awards, an event that honours academic brilliance, innovation, and social impact across the university.

Hosted at STIAS, the awards evening highlighted Stellenbosch University’s commitment to research that transforms ideas into real-world solutions while remaining both locally grounded and globally relevant. Dr Anyieth’s recognition speaks to this spirit of excellence and purpose.

A Postdoctoral Research Fellow at AVReQ, Dr Anyieth’s work sits at the intersection of law, gender, migration, and post-conflict studies, focusing on South Sudan, Sudan, and African diasporic communities in Australia. Her research interrogates the colonial legacies embedded in law and social structures, while advancing new understandings of justice and healing in post-violence societies.

Dr Anyieth recently returned from the Australian leg of her international book tour for Decolonising Family Violence Legal Intervention Orders in African Australian Communities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). The book forms part of a growing body of work that includes Violence and Trauma: Healing South Sudanese Families and Communities (Africa World Books, 2024), which has positioned her as a leading voice in post-conflict and diaspora studies.

At AVReQ, she coordinates postgraduate programmes, mentors emerging scholars, and leads initiatives under the UNESCO Chair in Intercultural Competence, with a particular focus on gender and cultural dialogue. Her achievement at the 2025 awards is a powerful affirmation of research that is both rigorous and reparative, embodying AVReQ’s commitment to scholarship that transforms the afterlives of violence into spaces for repair and renewal.

Congratulations, Dr Anyieth. Your work continues to inspire, challenge, and reshape how we imagine justice and belonging in a changing world.