Meet the Team

Professor Kalinga Tudor Silva

Professor Kalinga Tudor Silva is the research lead in Hidden Peace Builders Project in Sri Lanka.

Kalinga Tudor Silva holds a BA from the University of Peradeniya and PhD from Monash University, Australia. He served as the executive director of the Centre for Poverty Analysis from 2001 to 2002, and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies from 2007 to 2008. He is professor emeritus (Sociology) at University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Currently he is the chief editor of the Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences published by the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka.

He is the author of “Decolonization, Development and Disease: A Social History of Malaria in Sri Lanka” published in 2014 by Orient Blackswan and a joint author of Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque: a Collaborative Ethnography of War and Peace, published by Pluto Press in 2015 and the lead author of The Impact of COVID-19 on Peace Building Activities of Local Faith Actors in Sri Lanka, published in 2021.

Dr Jennifer Philippa Egert

Dr Jennifer Philippa Eggert is a UK-based researcher and practitioner with 20+ years of practical experience and 10+ years of research experience in the areas of conflict transformation and sustainable development with a focus on faith, gender and local approaches. She has worked with civil society initiatives, international organisations and universities in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. Jennifer works for the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities (www.jliflc.com), an international research and evidence collaboration bringing together researcher, practitioners, policymakers and faith actors who work on the role of religion in sustainable development, humanitarian action and peacebuilding. Jennifer's first book (published in 2021) focused on female fighters in non-state armed groups, and she currently works on a second book on Muslim women, terrorism, and counterterrorism. She is policy/practice editor of the journal 'Religion and Development' and co-convenes the 'Religions and Development' Study Group of the Development Studies Association. She tweets at @j_p_eggert.

Dr Jayeel Cornelio

Dr Jayeel Cornelio is the research lead for the Hidden Peacebuilders project in the Philippines.

He is Professor of Development Studies at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he also holds the Faura Research Foundational Professorial Chair. Among the books he has authored or edited include Being Catholic in the Contemporary Philippines: Young People Reinterpreting Religion (2016), the Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society (with Francois Gauthier, Tuomas Martikainen, and Linda Woodhead, 2021), and Rethinking Filipino Millennials: Alternative Perspectives on a Misunderstood Generation (2020), which one Best Book in the Social Sciences in the 2022 National Book Awards. He received the PhD in sociology from the National University of Singapore as a scholar of the Asia Research Institute and has held various posts at Lancaster University, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Louisville.

Beyond the academe, Professor Cornelio is the board secretary of the Joint Learning Initiative for Local & Faith Communities and a regular contributor to the Thought Leaders section of Rappler, one of the leading news websites in the Philippines.

Dr Theodore Mbazumutima

Dr. Theodore Mbazumutima is the Director of Burundian Peace-Building Organisation, Rema Burundi. Dr. Theodore Mbazumutima holds a PhD in Peacebuilding from Durban University of Technology. As a former refugee himself, He is currently working on a number of projects related to research-based advocacy on Forced Migrant rights in a transitional justice context. He also has been facilitating conflict transformation through dialogue among returnees, refugees and host communities. Based in Bujumbura, He regularly works with government policy making bodies to promote fair and peaceful post conflict society. Theo has lead Action Research and implementation teams on the issues of land restitution and refugee durable solutions in partnership with other organizations.Recently, Theo has been involved on a number of research activities in order to understand and articulate the contribution of Local Faith Actors to peacebuilding in Burundi.

Dr. Kathryn Kraft

Dr Kathryn Kraft is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of East London, specialising in faith and humanitarianism, spirituality in global child development and storytelling in social transformation. She has worked in a variety of different roles within the international development and humanitarian aid field, in various countries across the Middle East and the wider Arab world, as well as Southeast Asia, Haiti, and West Africa. Through research and consultancy she has supported peacebuilding and conflict sensitivity work at the grassroots level, working with local charities and faith organisations to improve their monitoring and impact evaluation through storytelling as a data collection technique as a tool for peace and community reconciliation. Currently, she serves as Senior Research Advisor for Faith and Development at World Vision international. A Christian NGO, World Vision operates in more than 100 countries. In this role she coordinates World Vision's strategic aim of building an evidence about the intersection between faith and development, including advising on research about the role of faith actors and faith leaders in social change, spiritual development as a part of child well-being, and the intersection between faith, values and ending violence against children.

Website: https://uel.ac.uk/about-uel/staff/kathryn-kraft

Professor Emma Tomalin

Professor Emma Tomalin is the Professor of Religion and Public Life at The University of Leeds. Emma is Principal Investigator of the British Academy grant that we won last year. Pictured is Emma at a workshop with faith leaders in Sri Lanka. Emma is the Principal Investigator on the AHRC Network Project, ‘Keeping Faith in 2030: Religions and the SDGs’ and co-convener of the DSA Study Group. She has academic interests in the intersections between religions and international development, religions and gender, and religions and health. She has also been working with Historic England on a scoping project of minority faith buildings in England. Her most recent project is funded by the ESRC on the topic of the role of faith based organisations in anti-trafficking in the UK.

Fathima Afra

Fathima Afra is working as a research assistant in our project from Sri Lanka. She completed BA (Hons) in Sociology and MA in Sociology, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Her interested research areas are Education, Rural Development, Gender and Religion. She worked as an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, University of Peradeniya.

Oscar Davies

Oscar Davies is our research and programme administration assistant based at The University of Leeds. Oscar is an MA student in International Relations, completing a thesis on peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, having studied History at The University of Edinburgh for his undergraduate degree.

Oscar joined the team in February and has been assisting with the day-to-day administration of the project, and has also begun research within the project.

Robbin Dagle

Robbin Dagle is a researcher based in the Development Studies Program, and a part-time lecturer in the Department of Communication of the Ateneo de Manila University. His scholarly interests are in the fields of religion, gender, peacebuilding, media, and journalism studies. In addition to his academic pursuits, he contributes as a freelance journalist, focusing on religious affairs within the Philippines.

Canesius Ndayikeza

Canesius Ndayikeza is our research assistant in Burundi. Canesius has over 10 years experience working for social cohesion in Burundi. He is a PhD student at the University of Burundi and collaborator on a project with the University of Durban.

Charles Rukundo

Charles Rukundo is currently serving as the head of climate resilience and food security component at Rema Burundi. Holding a Bachelor's degree in Education from the University of Burundi and a Higher Certificate in Project Planning and Project Management, his professional journey has been diverse, encompassing roles as both a teacher and a field surveyor. With a passion for fostering peace, Charles's commitment to this cause is deeply personal, having endured 12 years in exile as a refugee following the civil war that shook Burundi in 1993. In his current capacity, Charles oversees the subtitling of videos from Burundi.