When Sarika Dewan and Jürgen Sauer return to Darwin to graduate this weekend, they’ll be completing a story which began in Freshers’ Week of 2019.
The couple met at the Freshers’ Bop, an event which Sarika had almost swerved, feeling that after six years in the workplace she had moved on from student socialising.
“It was actually my sister who said ‘Sarika you have to go, you’re there now, you have to make the most of this week.’ So I ended up going, and that’s when I met him.”
In true Darwin style, Jürgen and Sarika represent four countries between them – she’s part Indian, part German and grew up in the UK, while he’s German/Polish. So they initially bonded over Jürgen’s hometown of Berlin, where Sarika’s family also lives. By the time the pandemic disrupted their Cambridge experience six months later, the pair had found their lockdown buddies.
Having previously studied Psychology at the University of York, before completing an MSc in Security and Crime Science at UCL, Sarika worked for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) before beginning her PhD. Her research, at the Institute of Criminology, focused on the impact of maternal exposure to violence on child malnutrition, taking her to Uganda as soon as Covid permitted.
“The borders to Uganda were closed for the longest time,” she explains. “So there I was in Cambridge wondering whether I’d ever be able to go, and whether my PhD would ever take place. Obviously we had lots of contingency plans, including having to just do desk research. But it just wouldn’t have been the same. So I waited one and a half years, and then finally, on the very first plane I could have taken, I was on my way to Kampala.”
Sarika worked with 487 mothers in 48 villages across northern Uganda, close to the border with South Sudan, travelling on the back of a motorbike through the rainy season to get to the more remote locations. Her interviews, conducted in Luo with the help of a local translator, were harrowing, covering the women’s experiences of childhood sexual abuse, intimate partner violence and the brutality of civil war. They revealed a striking correlation between the severity of the violence experienced by the mother in her lifetime, and the severity of malnutrition suffered by her children, through a combination of factors, from adverse mental health, and lack of control over their resources owing to partner violence, to the impact of trauma on an unborn child at a biological level.
Despite the horror of their experiences, Sarika came away from her encounters struck by the women’s strength.
“I got to meet incredible mothers, and incredible little babies. I would say for nine out of 10 women, it was really their children that kept them alive and kept them going in the face of so much trauma and in the face of so much adversity.”
Jürgen, who was pursuing his PhD at the Centre for Energy, Environment and Natural Resource Governance, was able to conduct his own research while based in Uganda. Examining the impact of Chinese investments in the global electricity sector, he created a unique data set of the world’s power plants, enabling him to perform quantitative analyses.
After completing his PhD in 2023 he returned to Berlin as a consultant for McKinsey, delaying his graduation until Sarika, whose studies had been extended by the pandemic, could graduate alongside him. She has returned to the UN, taking up a role as a Senior Consultant for UNICEF, and, after several moves, the two are currently based in Nairobi.
“Due to Covid and longer field work it took me a little longer. Four family weddings, a few health hurdles, and countless moves later, we are so happy to finally be returning to Darwin and graduating together. We really have Darwin to thank for introducing us!”