CV

Nicole Ahoya is a Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Lucerne (UNILU). Previously she worked for three years as a Lecturer and Research Assistant at the department until the end of January 2023. She has designed and taught several courses in the Anthropology of Law, Human Rights, and Justice, Anthropology of Digitalization, East Africa, and Introduction to Anthropology.

Her dissertation project, supervised by Prof. Dr. Sandra Bärnreuther, explores "justice" as a newly formulated sustainable development goal, both aiming at context-specific and universal notions of justice. The research focuses on non-state actors in Kenya and their approach to implementing "access to justice" with digital and entrepreneurial models. With this project, she hopes to provide insights into the ramifications of the uptake of justice as a development goal in Kenya. The project asks how and by whom is justice defined? Which justice programs are implemented and what implications do they have for different sets of actors? What role do digital and entrepreneurial models play in these new approaches?

Prior to her dissertation project, she conducted two research projects involving several months of fieldwork in Kenya. She investigated involuntary childlessness in Kenya and researched healthcare managers' practices in medical travel between Kenya and India.

Besides her studies of Anthropology (BA and MA) at the University of Zurich and Nairobi, Nicole also holds law degrees (BLaw and MLaw) from the University of Zurich. Having been trained in Law and Anthropology, she has a keen interest in suturing the two and doing research with an interdisciplinary perspective. She draws on several years of legal practice as a pro bono legal advisor, particularly in migration and asylum law, where she also gained extensive experience working with digital technologies in the legal field to provide access to justice.

Publications