Loes Loning

Loes Loning is a social anthropologist with 12 years of experience in Sub-Saharan Africa, having worked for various international development organizations, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and UNICEF. She has conducted and supervised qualitative research projects in Kenya, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe. Her areas of expertise include sexual and gender-based violence, conflict-related sexual violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, youth mental health, and the intergenerational effects of conflict and genocide. She is a doctoral candidate in social anthropology at the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Cape Town. Her doctoral research involved over two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Rwanda, exploring the social worlds and family relations of young people conceived in rape during the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. She holds a BA in Anthropology and Development from University College Utrecht, The Netherlands, and an MSc with distinction in Social and Cultural Anthropology from University College London, UK. 

Loes currently works as a researcher for Rutgers international, where she leads on research projects in the areas of sexual and gender-based violence, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, child marriage and female genital mutilation/circumcision. She is a co-chair of the Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN) Child and Youth Working Group and a research grant evaluator for the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Foundation.