International Development Centre, The Open University, United Kingdom

Professor Alcinda Honwana became director of IDC in December 2005. Before joining the OU, she worked for the Social Science Research Council in New York where she directed the Children and Armed Conflict Program and the Africa Programme. She also worked as a Programme Officer at United Nations, in the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict in New York. Professor Honwana was the coordinator of the International Research Network on Children and Armed Conflict from 2001 to 2005.

Born in Mozambique, Professor Honwana did her first degree in History and Geography at the University Eduardo Mondlane Maputo; then a Maitrise in Sociology at the Universite de Paris 8 in France; and a MA and PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of London in the UK. Professor Honwana lectured on Anthropology at the University Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, and in South Africa where she was a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. She has also been a Visiting Professor at Graduate Faculty at the New School University in New York. She has carried out extensive research in Mozambique on spirit possession and traditional healing, political conflict and politics of culture, and on the impact of political conflict on young people. Her latest publications include a book on Child Soldiers in Africa, 2006, University of Pennsylvania Press; a co-edited volume entitled Makers & Breakers: Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa, 2005, James Currey Publishers; and a book on Mozambique entitled Living Spirits, Modern Traditions: Spirit Possession and Post-War Healing in Southern Mozambique, 2003 Ela Por Ela (Lisbon) 2002 Promedia (Maputo). She has also published several book chapters and journal articles.

Professor Honwana was a member of the board of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) based in Dakar from 1998 to 2002. She was also a member of the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association in the USA in 2004/2005. She sits in various Editorial Boards amongst them are those of the Journal of the International African Institute; the Journal of Higher Education in Africa; and the African Sociological Review.