Meet the Team

Kingwa Kamencu is a multiple award winning writer and poet based in Kenya. Her published works include My Soul Begins to Flower: Poetry (Blackstar Press, 2025), Women Kingmakers: Operationalizing a Politics of Care (Badili Africa, 2024), The Shy Girl (Oxford University Press, Nairobi, 2010), and To Grasp at a Star (EAEP, Nairobi, 2005).

The novella To Grasp at a Star won three major Kenyan awards at its inception (the National Book Development Council Manuscript Award, The Wahome Mutahi Prize and the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature) and is currently on the Kenyan secondary school syllabus recommended reading list. She has also published poetry and short stories in varied anthologies. She has also written scripts for popular television programmes Stay (K24), and Madame President (YouTube, Facebook).

Having had a highly fulfilling career as an arts and culture journalist for more than ten years, she set up a firm Blackstar Media to further spotlight and highlight the work of the creative scene; and a non-profit organization, Culture and Communication in Development, to give support to enable the wellbeing and sustainability of creatives. Financial literacy, capacity building training, and wellness programs have been some of the most recent projects run to this end. She holds an MSt in Creative Writing and an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford.

Victoria Miyandazi completed her LLB with First Class Honours at Kenyatta University before obtaining a BCL, MPhil in Law, and DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She joined the University of Nottingham School of Law as an Assistant Professor in Public Law in April 2025. Prior to this, she was the Knight Fellow in Legal and Constitutional Research at the University of St Andrews, where she taught and supervised postgraduate research in Global Constitutionalism, Comparative Studies in Legal and Constitutional Research, and The Idea of Law.

She has served as a Legal Researcher for the Kenyan Judiciary Committee on Elections, and as a Researcher and Editor at the Oxford Human Rights Hub, where she led the Action4Justice Kenya project. She has also practised law as an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya, focusing on human rights and constitutional litigation. In addition to her legal practice and research, Victoria lectured at the University of Embu, teaching courses such as Property Law, Administrative Law, Public International Law, Civil Procedure, and Mooting. She also taught International Humanitarian Law and Equality Law as part of the University of Oxford’s Ohio State Pre-Law Programme.

She is the author of Equality in Kenya’s 2010 Constitution: Understanding the Competing and Interrelated Conceptions (Hart Publishing, 2021) and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and edited collections on issues relating to comparative constitutional law, equality, judicial politics, fourth branch institutions, human rights, and socio-economic justice. Victoria is a member of the UK Young Academy (2023–2028) and was named one of The Africa Report’s 10 African Scholars to Watch (2025).