Stephanie Savell

Stephanie Savell is co-director of the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. She’s an anthropologist of militarism, security, and civic engagement, with a particular focus on U.S. post-9/11 military operations in West Africa and beyond.

Adekeye Adebajo

Adekeye Adebajo is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He previously served as the Director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) from 2017- 2021.

Hannah Rae Armstrong

Hannah Rae Armstrong is a writer and policy advisor on peace and security in North Africa and the Sahel. Armstrong was International Crisis Group’s (ICG) senior Sahel analyst from 2018 to 2021 and a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa program. She holds degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and the New College of Florida.

Alex Thurston (Moderator)

Alex Thurston is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati. He has conducted research on issues pertaining to Islam and politics in northwest Africa since 2006. He is the author of three books, including his most recent, "Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel" (Cambridge, 2020).