Lucy Hovil is the Senior Researcher at the International Refugee Rights Initiative, where she has been co-coordinating a research and advocacy project on Citizenship and Forced Migration in the Great Lakes Region. She is also the Managing Editor for the International Journal of Transitional Justice. She was formerly the Senior Research and Advocacy Officer at the Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University, Uganda, where she founded the organisation's research department and oversaw their working paper series. She obtained her PhD (1999) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in which she explored the relationship between violence and identity in South Africa during the period of conflict that preceded the country's first inclusive election in 1994.