Rwanda: Post-Genocide Restoration and Peacebuilding

Faculty and Staff

Daniel Lumonya, Academic Director
Daniel Lumonya, a Ugandan national, received his BA in social work and social administration and his MA in social sector planning and management from Makerere University in Uganda. In addition, he holds certificates in research methodology and project formulation as well as project planning and management.

Daniel worked with the Uganda Constitutional Commission as part of a team that prepared Uganda’s 1995 constitution. He has lectured at Makerere University and served as a World Studies Fellow at Marlboro College in Vermont. He has served as an international student advisor and a World Studies Committee member and has taught courses on social dimensions of development, coordinating global perspectives, and rural development in sub-Saharan Africa.

From 2001 to 2007, Daniel served as the academic coordinator for the SIT Uganda: Development Studies program. For the past four years, he has taken students to Rwanda to study the impact of conflict on development and has been involved in a number of research projects and presentations on the health and safety of children and families in the region.

In addition to his position as academic director of SIT’s Rwanda: Post-Genocide Restoration and Peacebuilding semester program, he is the academic director of SIT’s Uganda/Rwanda: Peace and Conflict Studies in the Lake Victoria Basin summer program. Daniel is currently undertaking his PhD at Cornell University.

Vestine Mukamusana, Program Assistant
Vestine Mukamusana received her bachelor of arts degree in social science and education in 2008 from the Kigali Institute of Education in Rwanda. She joined SIT as a program assistant in February 2011. From October 2009 to December 2010, Vestine was the program assistant for GO ED, a program of American Study Abroad that is based out of the NGO Food for the Hungry International. She previously served as a translator with Compassion Rwanda and as an administrative assistant at Kicukiro College of Technology, and she worked with the European Union during the 2008 Rwandan elections. Vestine lives with her family in Kigali, and she enjoys playing the guitar and listening to music.

Issa Higiro, Homestay Coordinator and Program Assistant
A Rwandan citizen, Higiro has held the position of homestay coordinator and program assistant with SIT since the fall of 2009. He is the founder of Memos: Learning from History, a non-profit organization that deals with memory and reconciliation after the genocide. Higiro currently serves as the organization’s volunteer coordinator of training and networking. Furthermore, Higiro has been a committed peacemaker since 2001; he has ample experience working as a community coordinator and holds a peacemaker tag from the Peacemaker Institute. Higiro served as the assistant coordinator of a rescuers research project financed by the Hamburg Institute of Social Research in Germany in 2007, 2009, and 2010. Higiro grew up in exile in Uganda and returned to his home country of Rwanda immediately after the 1994 genocide. Higiro is married and has three daughters and one son.

Jean Pierre Bisangwa, Language Teacher
Jean Pierre Bisangwa holds a BA in management from Free University of Kigali (ULK), which he obtained in 2007. His teaching career began in 1996 when an American demining group came to Rwanda and he was trained by their trainers to translate between Kinyarwanda and English to facilitate communication between the American and Rwandan demining soldiers. He has been a teacher of Kinyarwanda at the International Language School in Kigali since 2004. He also teaches English at the Institute of Lay Adventist of Kigali (INILAK) to Rwandan university students. Mr. Bisangwa was a translator for English and Kinyarwanda for Swedish missionaries from 2004 to 2007. He has been teaching SIT students since fall 2009 and also works with a variety of expatriate clients in Kigali.

Denis Bikesha, Lecturer on the Gacaca Courts in Rwanda
Mr. Bikesha received a law degree (LLB) in 2004 from the Rwanda National University in Butare and since then has worked as a lawyer for the National Service of Gacaca Courts in Rwanda, which deals with cases related to the Rwandan genocide. In 2007, he became the National Service's director of training, mobilization, and sensitization. He is currently finalizing his master's degree in law (LLM) at the National University of Rwanda.

Mr. Bikesha has been very active in organizing training sessions and seminars regarding unity and reconciliation in Rwanda as well as abroad. He has attended various trainings in the field of transitional justice and peace-building. He has spent time in the US studying the American judicial system and has also traveled to five US states as an international visitor of the U.S Department of State. He has worked with SIT since 2005, both as a homestay coordinator and lecturer.

Bosco Habyarimana, Lecturer on peace education
Mr. Habyarimana is an assistant researcher and lecturer at the Center for Conflict Management at the National University of Rwanda. He lectures on conflict transformation as well as civic and peace education. He received his MA in peace education from the United Nations Mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. After obtaining his BEd in language teaching, Mr. Habyarimana worked for two years as a teacher of English and head of teaching staff. In 2006, he joined the National University of Rwanda as a tutorial assistant in the School of Foundation Language Schools where he was in charge of teaching English to students ready to commence their university courses.

Dr. Frank Nabwiso, Lecturer on post-conflict transformation and government initiatives towards peace in Uganda (a critique)
Dr. Nabwiso is an expert on adult education and rural development. He received his PhD in adult education and rural development from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1976); an MA in African Studies from the University of Sussex, England (1968); and a B.A. (Hons) in history and political science from the University of East Africa, then Makerere University College (1967). His teaching experience includes the following: part-time lecturer at Kyambogo University (2004-2005); teaching associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1975-76); head of the Correspondence and Mass Media Department at Makerere University (1971-72); and resident tutor at Makerere University (1969-70).

Professor Paul Rutayisire, Lecturer on the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) war, the Arusha Peace Agreement, and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
A Rwandan national, Professor Rutayisire holds a PhD in history from Fribourg University in Switzerland. He lectures at the National University of Rwanda and is director of the university's Center for Conflict Management. His fields of specialization are religion and society as well as conflict transformation and genocide studies. He has published extensively on Rwandan history and has participated in many crucial research projects on topics related to the post-genocide reconstruction of Rwanda.

Bernard Noel Rutikanga, Lecturer for identity politics and political developments pre-genocide
Bernard Noel Rutikanga obtained a bachelor of arts degree and a master's degree from the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania between 1976 and 1980. At the undergraduate level he was trained to teach African history and African literature. His master's degree focused on contemporary African history. He taught for ten years at Dar-es-salaam Teachers College before directing a Namibian and South African refugee scholarship program in Tanzania for five years - this was in collaboration with the defunct World University Service, Geneva. Mr. Rutikanga has been teaching contemporary Rwandan history at the National University of Rwanda since 1995. He has published on reconciliation and ethnicity in Rwanda. He has also served as a gacaca judge (the traditional jurisdiction system that has been trying genocide related crimes committed in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994). In 2000 he was a Fulbright scholar at Boston College in Massachusetts.

Credits: 16

Duration: 15 weeks

Program Base: Rwanda, Kigali

Language Study: Kinyarwanda

Prerequisites: Coursework in conflict theories recommended. Read more...