Living Sudan

This panel centers the Sudanese transnational experience through artistic expression as a way of connecting diasporic communities. Focusing on Sudanese living abroad, both long-term migrants and those who have been recently displaced, the panelists explore how these communities navigate themes of belonging, memory, and migration. The panel further interrogates how art produced in exile contributes to broader dialogues on cultural resilience, while simultaneously challenging dominant portrayals of Sudan as defined solely by violence or rupture.

Speakers:

Salma Amin is the co-founder of Andariya, a purpose-driven entrepreneur, and a leader in the marketing communications field. Passionate about storytelling and audience engagement, she excels at crafting research-driven strategies that amplify voices, ignite conversations, and yield significant impact. A staunch advocate for representation, she is committed to establishing platforms where diverse perspectives are celebrated and shared.

Ruba El Melik is a writer and researcher, and has contributed to the literary journal Mizna: SWANA Lit + Art as an editor and has written for publications such as Africa Is Now, poetry.onl, Acacia, Mizna, Sand Journal, and LOLWE. She is the co-author of (Un)Doing Resistance: Authoritarianism and Attacks on the Arts in Sudan’s 30 Years of Islamist Rule (Andariya, 2022), written alongside journalist Reem Abbas.

Stella Gaitano is a South Sudanese writer. She has two short story collections whetherd flowers and The return, as well as one children’s book and two novels. Her novel Edo’s souls was the first South Sudanese novel to win the PEN prize for translation. This novel is now nominated in Warwick Prize for Women in Translation in October. Her second novel Ereme, shortlisted for the PEN English +Booker Prize award for translation in April 2025. Since 2022, she has lived in Germany as a fellow in Writer in Exile program supported by PEN Germany center.

Anna Simone Ruemert is a political anthropologist and a gender studies scholar. She is currently a Crown Center Junior Research Fellow at Brandeis University. Prior to this, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at The New School’s Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cultural Anthropology, Mashriq&Mahjar, IJMES, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Merip, Rusted Radishes, Kohl Journal for Body and Gender Research, Jadaliyya, among other journals. She is currently working on two research projects in Sudan and Lebanon. Her first book manuscript Mobilized: Labor and Political Mobilization Out of Sudan follows Sudanese migrant workers in Lebanon and migrant returnees in Sudan following the 2018- revolution. Her second book project, Sex and the Civil War, examines the political economy of sex in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990).

Moderator:

Qutouf Elobaid is a writer and curator with a special interest in the Poetics of the Archive. In 2016, she co-founded Locale, a platform to exhibit, design, and collaborate with Sudanese artists. She is the author of My Poets Don’t Die, an anthology in the New-Generation African Poets Series.