Laine Munir

Laine Munir is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Rwanda's Center of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management in Kigali, Rwanda. She is a political and legal ethnographer examining the intersection of gender, environmental governance, migration, and economic justice in sub-Saharan Africa.  

She was a 2021 Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar for “Women, Conflict, and Modern Mining in Rwanda" and a 2018-2019 Research Fellow at the George Mason University's School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution in South Korea. She was a Boren Fellow funded by the National Security Education Program to study the Igbo language for her doctoral dissertation on women's role in oil resistance in Nigeria. She has been published in the Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Rural Studies, and Journal of Political Science Education, among others. 

As an international development consultant in Africa, her collaborative work focused on gender mainstreaming, livelihoods, legal analysis, and environmental studies. She led the planning and implementation of baseline studies, audits of national budgets, and impact assessments for government agencies and corporate clients.