Scholar Details

Participant Info

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First

Susan

Last

Shepler

Email

shepler AT american.edu

Twitter Handle

username

shepler

Position/Title

Associate Professor

Area of expertise

ethnography, child soldiers, post-conflict reconstruction, education, youth and peacebuilding, refugees, transitional justice, Ebola

Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria

Policy Area

child protection

post-conflict reconstruction

education

youth

Ebola

Teaching

Qualitative methods in peace and conflict research

youth and conflict

children in international affairs

conflict in Africa

Recent Publications

Book:

Childhood Deployed: remaking child soldiers in Sierra Leone. New York University Press, June 2014.

 

Refereed Journal Articles:

“Effects in post-conflict West Africa of teacher training for refugee women.” Co-authored with Sharyn Routh. Gender and Education. 24(4): 429-441. July 2012.

“Introduction to Special Issue: Everyday Life in Post-war Sierra Leone.” Co-authored with Aisha Fofana Ibrahim. Africa Today. 58(2): v-xii. December 2011.

“The Real and Symbolic Importance of Food in War: Hunger Pains and Big Men’s Bellies in Sierra Leone.” Africa Today. 58(2): 43-56. December 2011.

“Youth Music and Politics in Postwar Sierra Leone.” Journal of Modern African Studies. 48(4): 627-642. December 2010.

“Child labour and youth enterprise: Post-war urban infrastructure and the bearing boys of Freetown.” Anthropology Today. 26(6): 19-22. December 2010.

“The Rites of the Child: Global Discourses of Youth and Reintegrating Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone” Journal of Human Rights 4(2): 197-211. June 2005.

 

Chapters in Edited Volumes:

“Sierra Leone, child soldiers, and global flows of child protection expertise,” in The Upper Guinea Coast in Transnational Perspective. Christoph Kohl and Jacqueline Knörr, eds. Berghahn Books. Manuscript under review.

“‘Helping our children will help in the reconstruction of our country’: Repatriated refugee teachers in post-conflict Sierra Leone and Liberia” in Educating Children in Conflict Zones: Research, Policy, and Practice for Systemic Change—A Tribute to Jackie Kirk. Karen Mundy and Sarah Dryden-Peterson, Eds. Teachers College Press, Columbia University. 2011.

“Transnational Fosterage: The Novel Care Arrangements between Guinean Caregivers and Ivorian and Liberian Children Fleeing War” in Everyday Ruptures: Children, Youth, and Migration in Global Perspective. Cati Coe, Rachel Reynolds, Deborah Boehm, Julia Hess, and Heather Rae-Espinoza, Eds. Vanderbilt University Press. 2011.

“Are child soldiers in Sierra Leone a new phenomenon?” in The Powerful Presence of the Past: Integration and Conflict along the Upper Guinea Coast. Jacqueline Knörr and Wilson Trajano Filho, Eds. Brill Publishers: Leiden, the Netherlands. 2010.

Monographs:

Analysis of the Situation of Children Affected by Armed Conflict in the Niger Delta and the Northern Region of Nigeria. UNICEF Nigeria and Search for Common Ground, Nigeria. July 2012.

Does Teacher Training for Refugees Contribute to Post-conflict Reconstruction of Educational Systems? Evidence from West Africa. The International Rescue Committee, LEGACY Initiative. New York. July 2010.

Transnational Fosterage of War-affected Children in West Africa: Immediate Coping Capacities Across Borders. UNICEF, West and Central Africa Region. Dakar, Senegal. January 2006.