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Department of Sociology, Politics and International Relations
  1. School of Society and Environment – Department of Sociology, Politics and International Relations
  2. Research
  3. African Elections Study
  4. Our team

Our team

Team members

Dr Innocent Batsani-Ncube 

Dr Innocent Batsani-Ncube is the Electoral Integrity Peer Review Mechanisms’ (EIPRMs) Principal Investigator and founder of the Africa Elections Study (AES) at Queen Mary. An award-winning academic and veteran former civil society leader in Africa, his research examines political dynamics in African regional organisations, with a particular focus on the SADC.

Through the AES, he leads an experiential public policy initiative that leverages rigorous on-the-ground electoral observations to comparatively track the ways in which African states handle the generation, deployment and securing of election materials alongside results transmission. He brings extensive fieldwork experience and provides overall strategic direction for the EIPRMs project.

 

Dr Anna Kapambwe Mwaba 

Dr Anna Kapambwe Mwaba is the EIPRMs Co-Investigator and an Assistant Professor in Government at Smith College, with faculty affiliations in the Programs of African Studies and Global South Development Studies.

Her research centres on the role of African international and regional organisations in election observation and democracy promotion, with expertise in the ECOWAS and Southern Africa. She earned her doctorate in political science from the University of Florida, Gainesville, specialising in comparative politics and International Relations.

 

Dr Maureen Lifongo 

Dr Maureen Lifongo is a Postdoctoral Researcher on the EIPRMs project. She earned her PhD from the University of Johannesburg. Her scholarship focuses on democratisation, electoral governance, gender and the role of regional organisations in promoting democracy and electoral standards. She contributes specialised expertise on the ECCAS.

 

Bella Nininahazwe

Bella Nininahazwe is a PhD researcher on the EIPRMs project. She is a trained journalist by profession. Her doctoral research examines the domestic and regional dimensions of the alteration of Burundi’s Arusha power-sharing framework.  She explores how and why Burundi’s ruling elites utilised successive electoral cycles since 2005 to incrementally alter the framework and the responses of the East African Community (EAC) and the African Union to these alterations. She contributes specialised expertise on the EAC and multilingual capacity (English/French).

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