Welcome to our 2020-22 biennial report! These two years have seen us into our second decade as a research centre, have seen our team grow, and have seen our work consolidate and head in new directions. Of course, the background to all this has been the tumultuous time of the Covid-19 pandemic, which presented a raft of challenges to our Centre to maintain community, conduct research and convene exchanges and learning. Like others, we adapted, discovered new ways of working and sought, above all, to support each other and our partners and colleagues through trying times. We are really proud of how our community came together, while also somehow finding time to engage in crucial research and policy engagements that supported our wider world. These ranged from examining Covid-19-related state surveillance in Africa to thinking through how freedoms of expression and assembly manifest and are challenged and promoted online. In this introduction, we outline a few more highlights of a very busy two years.
