Kennedy Amone P'Olak
Dr Kennedy Amone-P’Olak is a Lecturer at Gulu University in Uganda. He holds BA and MEd degrees in Education from Makerere University in Uganda, an MSc in Health Psychology from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and a PhD in Mental Health from University of Groningen, also in the Netherlands. Kennedy has won several scholarships and awards, fellowships and grants to study for his various degrees, attend summer schools and courses, and to conduct research. He has published many peer-reviewed papers in international journals, and co-authored a book chapter on the interface between early school leavers and conflict in northern Uganda. Kennedy completed his two-year THRiVE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in February 2013. His research project focused on War-affected youths in northern Uganda: A longitudinal study of post-war individual, family, and contextual factors and course of mental health. Kennedy spent approximately six months (over three separate visits) of his fellowship at the University of Cambridge, collaborating with Professor Peter Jones (Head of the Department of Psychiatry), Professor Tim Croudace (who has now relocated to the University of York), Dr Rosemary Abbot (now with Cambridge Cognition) and Dr Richard Meiser-Stedman (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge). At Gulu University, Kennedy's postdoctoral research was supervised by Professor Emilio Ovuga. During Kennedy's visits to Cambridge, he attended courses, gave presentations (to both scientific and non-scientific audiences) and built wide networks for future collaborations. Kennedy has so far published six articles from his research in international journals (in collaboration with his mentors/supervisor in Cambridge and Gulu).
After completing his THRiVE postdoctoral fellowship, Kennedy secured the position of a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Crisis Psychology in Bergen in Norway for six months. This fellowship provided Kennedy with the intellectual space he needs to prepare new manuscripts, using the data he generated during his THRiVE postdoctoral research in Gulu and Cambridge. Kennedy is continuing to search and apply for appropriate grants to continue his research, but is currently on sabbatical at the Department of Psychology, University of Botswana.