NUMBER 35 / 1995

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Alice ARMSTRONG, an initiator of the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project, obtained her J.D. degree from Boston University, USA. She taught law for some years at the University of Swaziland, and has now been a member of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zimbabwe for more than ten years. She edited Women and Law in Southern Africa (Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1987), and has carried out considerable research on the legal and social position of women in the countries of Southern Africa.

John GRIFFITHS is Professor of Sociology of Law at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and was until recently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Legal Pluralism.

Frank HIRTZ studied Law, Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Universities of Kiel, Bielefeld and Johannesburg, and has worked as a rural institutions officer for the Food and Agriculture Organisation in the Philippines, Haiti, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. He has carried out research in rural areas in the Phillipines and other countries, and has published reports and articles on land reform, rural development, rural administration, self-help groups and law and development. He has worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Social Law, Tutzing, Germany, and is currently working in the Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Davis.

Randy Frances KANDEL is an Associate Professor at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. She has been studying child custody mediation in California for several years, and has already published papers on the subject, the most recent being "Power plays: a sociolinguistic study of inequality in child custody mediation and a hearsay analog solution" Arizona Law Review 36: 879-972.

Azza M. KARAM is an anthropologist with a special interest in feminist issues and Islamic law. She works in Egypt and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam.

Heinz KLUG holds a B.A. degree from the University of Natal (Durban), and a J.D. from the University of California (Hastings). He is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and an Advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa as well as a Member of the California Bar. He is currently working in the USA as an S.J.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin‑Madison.

Welshman NCUBE, an initiator of the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project, is a member of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zimbabwe, where he gained the LL.B. and M.Phil. degrees. He has written Comparative Matrimonial Property Systems: The Search for an Equitable System of Re-Allocation of Matrimonial Property (University of Oslo, 1989), and many other papers on family law in Southern Africa.

Tom QUINLAN is a Research Officer at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Durban-Westville. He has studied at the University of Cape Town, and has carried out research on land tenure and land use in Lesotho.

Bart RWEZAURA, who has frequently worked in the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project, is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and is currently on leave of absence working as a member of the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong. He carried out research on the marriage law of the Kuria of Tanzania for his Ph.D., awarded by the University of Warwick, and has published extensively on family law in Africa.

Julie STEWART, a member of the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project, gained her LL.B. degree from the University of London. She is a member of the Faculty of Law of the University of Zimbabwe, and has written about the law of succession, women's rights, and the dissemination of law.

Melanie G. WIBER is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of New Brunswick. She has carried out field research in the Philippines, and is now also engaged in field research in farming communities New Brunswick.

The collective authors of the paper "Parting the long grass: revealing and reconceptualising the African family" are all members of the WOMEN AND LAW IN SOUTHERN AFRICA RESEARCH PROJECT. Those who are not specifically listed above are law teachers, researchers or legal practitioners in the countries of Southern Africa.