Virginia Luling

Virginia Luling studied at Oxford and London and took her PhD in Social Anthropology in 1972. Her field research was done in Afgooye, Somalia. Her publications include Somali Sultanate; the Geledi City State over 150 years (2002) and articles including 'Some Possession Cults in Southern Somalia' (1991), 'The Law then was not this Law' (1996); 'Past and Present in Improvised Verse at a South Somali Festival' (1996), 'Come Back Somalia? Questioning a Collapsed State' (1997), and 'Genealogy as Theory, Genealogy as Tool: Aspects of Somali Clanship' (2006). From 1983 to 2004 she worked for the human rights organisation Survival International. She is Secretary of the Anglo-Somali Society and is working on a history of the Begedi clan.