Lovise Aalen

Lovise Aalen is a research professor (PhD, political science) at Chr. Michelsen Institute. She has been working on the Horn of Africa for the last 17 years, where her research (including several long-term fieldwork studies) has focused on governance in multi-ethnic states coming out of civil war. She has studied democratisation processes, elections and ethnic federalism in Ethiopia and the power sharing deal between Sudan and South Sudan after 2005. Through her PhD, she has also addressed the gender and minority rights aspects of the Ethiopian ethnic-based federalism, including the rights of women and sub-ethnic minorities. More recently, she has explored the emergence of female manufacturing jobs for women in Ethiopia, and what kind of impact that has on the status of women at home and in society, in the project ‘Women in the developmental state: female employment and empowerment in Ethiopia’.