Danielle Del Vicario

Research Topic

The life, legacy and memorialization of Dr John Garang de Mabior

Supervisor: Professor Jocelyn Alexander

This project focuses on the life, legacy and memorialization of Dr John Garang de Mabior, the founder of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) which fought a twenty-two-year war against the government of Sudan. The research has three parts. First, it addresses a gap in the extant academic literature on the intersection of education, liberation politics and transnationalism in southern Sudan, tracing Garang’s regional and international movements from the 1960s to his death in 2005. Second, it considers a range of biographical narratives told of Garang contemporaneously and retrospectively, analyzing the powers and limitations of historical storytelling in South Sudan. Third, it analyzes how Garang’s concept of a ‘New Sudan’, previously a non-secessionist politics based on reform in a united Sudan, has developed since South Sudanese independence in 2011.