The 2025 Sir William Luce Fellow

The 2025 Sir William Luce Fellow is Dr Mariasole Pepa. Dr Pepa is a geographer based at the University of Padua and a research affiliate at CEDEJ-Khartoum. Her work engages with transformations in development geographies through post-development and decolonial lenses, with a focus on the geopolitical implications of Africa-China relations. Her research examines how water and land can serve as critical geographical lenses for understanding processes of transformation across the Sahel, particularly in Sudan. She is a core member of the AtlaSahel project and cofounded the Italian Association on Africa-China Studies (AISAC). Her work critically engages with creative methodologies, disobedient pedagogies, and engaged research practices. Within this framework, her most recenet project is “Akhir Faysal-Faysal Last Stop”, a collaborative research project developed with Sudanese women in Cairo.

Dr Pepa will present her research at the Sir William Luce lecture on 11th May 2025.