Dr Sonja Theron

Dr Sonja Theron is currently a Lecturer at the University of Pretoria (UP) in the Department of Political Sciences and a Senior Associate Fellow at the African Leadership Centre (ALC) at King’s College London. She was Programme Director for Research in the Centre of Mediation in Africa from 2020 to 2022. From 2018 to 2020, Dr Theron was appointed as the first Joint-Postdoctoral Research Fellow between UP and the ALC. She has also worked at the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation (GovInn) and as a consultant on various research projects related to peace and security. She recently published a book with Bloomsbury Academic Press titled Leadership, Nation-building and War in South Sudan: The Problems of Statehood and Collective Will. Dr Theron completed an MA Fellowship from 2011-2013 at the ALC, and served as an intern/visiting fellow for 6 months between 2012-2013 at the Institute of Development Studies, at the University of Nairobi. Dr Theron obtained her Doctor of Philosophy qualification from the University of Pretoria, during which she received the Commonwealth Split-Site PhD Scholarship, tenured at King’s College London.