Dr. Eric Awich Ochen is currently an Associate Professor at Makerere University’s Department of Social Work and Social Administration, School of Social Sciences, in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kampala Uganda. His main interests revolve around issues of rights-based approaches to development, Social impacts and risks considerations as a result of development interventions (especially on children and young people), and integration of social (including gender issues) in development processes. With trainings in gender analysis, projects appraisals, project management and evaluations, Dr Ochen is well conversant with a repertoire of tools which facilitate the considerations of social impacts of development interventions including analysis of the social costs of projects investments from a societal point of view and gender analysis tools.
Dr Ochen completed his doctoral studies at the Centre for Applied Childhood Studies in the School of Human and Health Sciences, University of Huddersfield, UK in November, 2011. His PhD explores the narratives of young women’s experiences of the conflict and reintegration process in Northern Uganda, as well as an assessment of development interventions to address the emergent socio-economic crisis in the region. He also graduated with an M.Sc. in Development and Project Planning (with Distinction) from the University of Bradford in 2002 and also hold a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work and Social Administration, from Makerere University in Uganda (1999). Dr Ochen has completed Post-doctoral training at the University of Cambridge (2016 and 2017-2018) and Bradford between 2016 and 2017.
Dr Eric Awich Ochen has been Honorary Visiting Senior Lecturer and Commonwealth Academic fellow at the University of Bradford’s John and Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies, 2016-2017, and a Carnegie Corporation CAPREX fellow at the Center of African Studies, University of Cambridge. Dr Ochen was PI and Country Director for the project Co-investigator and Country Director, Uganda, None in three Project for the elimination of Gender Based Violence (Uganda, United Kingdom, Jamaica, China and India), funded by Research and Innovation funds UK, £5,000,000, October 2017- December 2021, with approximately £380,000 being expended at Makerere University. Principal Investigator and Southern Partner Regional Coordinator, Building resilient communities in Eastern Africa, NORHED II Norwegian capacity in higher education funded project, US$ 1,950,000. He is also Principal Investigator, for the study “a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) Approach to Enhancing the Learning Experience for Pupils and Students in Schools in Central Uganda”, September 2020- June 2022, funded at USD 44,000. Eric was also Co-investigator, Knowledge, adherence and the lived experiences of refugees in COVID-19: A comparative assessment of urban and rural refugee settings in Uganda, funded to the tune of £158,000 by UKAid and Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises.
Dr Ochen, is the Associate Editor for the Children and Youth Services Review, an Elsevier Journal. He is also a reviewer for the Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge University Press), Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect (Elsevier); the British Journal of Social Work (Oxford University Press); and Journal of Refugee Studies (Oxford University Press). Dr Ochen is the author of several articles on children and young people in conflict situations, spanning publications in journals such as Child Abuse and Neglect, British Journal of Social Work, Journal of Community Practice, Anthropology Southern Africa, Infant Mental Health journal, Social Sciences, Vienna Journal of African Studies; Journal of Affective Disorders; International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health, and Childhood in Africa: An Inter Disciplinary Journal. several high quality book chapter contributions. Dr. Ochen is currently working on a post-doctoral project on how Young people participate in post conflict peace building in northern Uganda, and an assessment of how youth subcultures influences young people behavior in a formerly conflict affected areas.
