Yotam Gidron

Yotam Gidron is a Research Fellow at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the KU Leuven University and a Research Associate with Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. His work lies at the intersection of African history, the anthropology of religion, economic anthropology, and migration studies. He completed his PhD in African History in Durham University, and have worked as a researcher and consultant with international and local organisations in East Africa on refugee issues, including livelihoods and mobility, protection, and localisation. His first book, Israel in Africa: Security, Migration, Interstate Politics (Bloomsbury) was published in 2020 as part of the African Arguments book series.

Recent publications:

Gidron, Y. (forthcoming, 2026). Nuer Messianic Judaism: Truth and Mediation in the Ethiopia-South Sudan Borderlands. Cambridge University Press.

Gidron, Y. (2025). “On the Lord’s side”: Christian Zionism and political legitimacy in Uganda,’ Religion, State, and Society 53(1): 1-18.

Omata, N. & Gidron, Y. (2025). Returning to fund refugeehood: dispersal and survival between Uganda and South Sudan. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 51(1).

Innocent, P., & Gidron, Y. (2024). The Lives and Afterlives of Plastic Bags: Food Systems, Urban Self-fashioning, and Environmental Pollution in Uganda. Anthropology Now 16(3) (2024).

Gidron, Y. (2024). Africa’s Christian Zionist frontiers. Religious Compass 18(9),1-7.

Gidron, Y. (2020). Israel in Africa: Security, Migration, Interstate Politics. Zed Books.