Community Engagement and Partnerships

Abdihakem is an Economics graduate.

His intellectual interests include Development Economics, Systems Theory and Anthropology of Nationalism. His work engages with how conceptions of personal agency and national identity intersect to shape processes of nation-building, within the confines of a globalised, ‘linked’ world.

Abdihakem’s current roles within Gobanimo include community outreach, developing the youth lecture series and being treasurer.

Community Engagement and Partnerships

Ahmed is a politics and international relations graduate.

His intellectual interests include historical enquiry, political science, public policy development, and diplomatic studies. His background in political administration informs his broader intellectual project of examining and critically analysing the structural dynamics of Somali governance and political culture.

Ahmed’s current roles within Gobanimo include community outreach, developing the youth lecture series and typesetting the upcoming third issue.

Research & Theoretical Development

Ayub is currently studying politics, history and philosophy. His work is primarily situated at the intersection of political theory, historical inquiry, and philosophy.

His intellectual interests span the historical trajectories of the Horn of Africa and East Africa more broadly, as well as Islamic intellectual traditions and East Asian imperial formations. He is animated by a commitment to rethinking the condition of Somalia through the lens of political economy with an emphasis on insights from decolonial Marxism.

Ayub’s current roles at Gobanimo include leading the upcoming Podcast Gobanimo project and overseeing comms.

Critical Commentary and Digital Publications

Bilan graduated with a degree in Human Geography and is now pursuing a masters degree in Environment, Politics and Society.

Her intellectual interests include postcolonial, feminist and marxist geographies, having previously written pieces on urban and rural landscapes, architecture, knowledge creation, space and identity and more. She is concerned with mapping invisibilised discourses, struggle and compromise through our built and imaginative environments and exploring Somali alterity

Bilan’s current roles at Gobanimo include providing critical commentary on developments within the social, cultural, and political spheres, editing the Gobanimo blog, and managing event planning logistics.

Critical Commentary and Digital Publications

Dabindid is currently pursuing his PhD in political theory & sociology to better understand the historical organisation of social relations in the Somali Horn.

His intellectual interests extend to Marxist, Decolonial thought and third worldist histories with a commitment to connecting regional traditions of political thought to wider global struggles for justice and self-determination

Dabindid’s current roles at Gobanimo include providing critical commentary on developments within the social, cultural, and political spheres, editing the Gobanimo blog, and managing event planning logistics.

Research & Theoretical Development

Ibrahim is a writer, archivist, researcher and co-founder of Koor Archives.

His intellectual interests include the social organisation of the Somali Horn from antiquity to the contemporary period (1000 BCE to present), examining the intersection of poetry and Somali political identity, with particular attention to the work of Hadraawi, and investigating the sociopolitical dimensions of poetic metre in Somali identity formation. He is currently working on his first monograph, which explores the metre of southern Somali poetic forms.

Ibrahim’s current roles at Gobanimo include editing the upcoming third issue and leading the development of the 2026 programmes.