Letha Victor | Haunting: Beyond Trauma in Acholi, Uganda

Letha Victor is an anthropologist, writer, and assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Since 2008 she has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork on postcolonial violence, haunting, human-spirit relations, and ethics in the Acholi sub-region of northern Uganda.

Letha is interested in a broad range of issues that includes witchcraft and conspiracy, debates about authenticity, ritual expertise, and decolonisation, social suffering and more. She is currently working on an ethnographic book manuscript provisionally titled The World Outside, The World Inside: Haunting Beyond Trauma in Acholi, Uganda. In her spare time she tells bad jokes, tends to an indoor jungle, and tries to make good trouble.

Further Reading:

Lamwaka, Caroline. 2016. The Raging Storm: a reporter's inside account of the Northern Uganda War, 1986-2005. Kamapal: Fountain Publishers.

 Okot Bitek J. 2020. ‘What Choice Between Nightmares?: Intersecting Local, Global and Intimate Stories of Pain in Peacebuilding.” In: Mitchell J., Vincett G., Hawksley T., Culbertson H. (eds) Peacebuilding and the Arts. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

 Victor, Letha. 2019. “Those who go underwater indignation, sentiment, and ethical immanence in northern Uganda.” Anthropological Theory 19(3):385-411.

 Victor, Letha and Holly Porter. 2017. “Dirty Things: spiritual pollution and life after the Lord’s Resistance Army.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 11(4): 590-608.