Honorary Officers
![]() Professor Justin WillisPresidentJustin is Professor in History at Durham University in the UK. His involvement with BIEA goes back to 1986, when he was a graduate attachee; he has subsequently served as assistant director, honorary treasurer, director, and vice-president for research. Justin’s work has largely been concerned with questions of identity and moral authority in eastern Africa in the last two centuries. He is the author of Mombasa, the Swahili and the Making of the Mijikenda (Oxford, 1993); Potent Brews: A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa (Nairobi and Oxford, 2002); and (with Nic Cheeseman and Gabrielle Lynch) The Moral Economy of Elections in Africa: Democracy, Voting and Virtue (Cambridge, 2021). He was one of the editors of The Sudan Handbook (2011). ![]() Professor Gabrielle lynchVice President for ResearchGabrielle Lynch is a Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Warwick. She is the author of over 30 articles and book chapters, and author or editor of five books, including I Say to You: Ethnic Politics and the Kalenjin in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and Performances of Injustice: The Politics of Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Kenya (Cambridge University Press, 2018). She is the Deputy Chair of the Review of African Political Economy, and wrote a regular column in Kenya’s Saturday Nation (2014-2018) and The East African (2015-2017). Gabrielle participated in the BIEA graduate attachment scheme in 2003, joined the BIEA Council as an elected member in 2010, and was appointed Vice President/Research in 2019. ![]() Rt hon Mr Mark SimmondsVice President for External Relations and DevelopmentRt Hon Mark Simmonds was The Foreign & Commonwealth office Minister with responsibilities for Africa, the Caribbean, UK Overseas Territories, International Energy and Conflict Prevention. He served as a Member of the UK Parliament for 14 years. He was also a Senior Advisor to The Prime Minister David Cameron. He focussed on driving and facilitating inward investment into Africa and the Commonwealth across a range of key economic sectors including Hydrocarbons, Financial Services, Healthcare, Infrastructure, Energy & Agriculture. He has a huge knowledge of the economic and political composition of African Governments, countries and regions. He Chaired the UN Security Council on two occasions. He is Chairman of Africa Oil Week “The Davos of Africa’s Hydrocarbon Industry” the link between African Governments and the Private Sector. He also Chairs the African Oil Week Advisory Board. He is additionally involved in clean technology for the agriculture, healthcare, transport, energy & extractive sectors. He now has several international roles. Including Senior Advisor to International Investigation Firm, Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Global Investment platform, Invest Africa, Senior Advisor to a Global Multi-Strategy Hedge Fund, and Senior Advisor to a large UK based Family Office. Advisor to a Large US Private Equity Firm & Advisory Board Member of the Commonwealth Investment Council. He also has roles with not-for-profit organisations, including as Honorary Vice President of Flora & Fauna International. He is a Trustee of the British Institute in East Africa and Board Member of Engender Health. He is a Member of her Majesty’s Privy Council. Mark is married with three children. ![]() Mr Robert TenchTreasurerRobert is a retired accountant who lives in London. He spent the larger part of his career in a variety of finance roles with Xerox Europe and subsequently 15 years as Finance Director of the international classical musicians’ agency, Intermusica. ![]() Professor Peter Mitchell fsaSecretaryPeter Mitchell studied Archaeology & Anthropology at Cambridge and then took his doctorate in Archaeology from Oxford, focusing on the late Pleistocene Later Stone Age of southern Africa. After stints at Cape Town and in Wales, he returned to Oxford in 1995 where he is Professor of African Archaeology and Tutor in Archaeology at St Hugh’s College. He has directed several projects in Lesotho, including the Metolong Cultural Heritage Management Project (2008–12). He has been a member of the Governing Council of the British Institute in Eastern Africa since 2000, served as President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists from 2004 to 2006, is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and co-edits Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa. He has written widely on African archaeology (The Archaeology of Southern Africa, CUP 2002; African Connections: Archaeological Perspectives on Africa and the Wider World, AltaMira Press 2005; The First Africans: African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to Most Recent Foragers, CUP 2008, with Larry Barham) and edited the Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology with Paul Lane (OUP 2013). More recent books include Horse Nations, a survey of post-Columbian equestrian adaptations in the Americas, southern Africa and Australasia, (OUP 2015) and The Donkey in Human History (OUP 2018). |