Sauda Nabukenya

Biography

Sauda Nabukenya is a legal and social historian of modern Africa. Her research focuses on histories of law, constitutions, gender, class, property, and labor relationships in colonial and postcolonial Africa. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and an M.A. from Makerere University. She has published articles on constitution-making, vernacular legal records, and the epistemological limits of colonial legal archives. Her book project examines how ordinary people shaped law and legal practice, drawing on over 150,000 court records she personally discovered, organized, and helped transfer to the Uganda National Archives. Current projects include chapters for the Oxford Handbook of African Constitutions and the Oxford Handbook of Traditional Law and Governance in Africa, articles on vernacular legal reasoning in colonial Buganda, DNA paternity testing and customary law, and contractual relations and domestic labor. She serves as Associate Editor of the African Journal of Legal Studies (Brill). At USU, Dr. Nabukenya offers undergraduate and graduate courses including The Modern World, Africa and the World, History and Theory, and Comparative Legal History.