Sudan offers the student of politics an important case study for many topics of general interest: the role of authoritarian legacies, political revolution, the causes of warfare and famine, civil-military relations, rival state-building and para-military projects, the thorny question of Islamist political ideology and the implementation (or modernization) of religious law, as well as the long-term development of societies characterized by stark ethnic cleavages and evolving political economies of extraction. These sources are mostly in English. At the end I've included some mutual aid sites, as well as literature and film recommendations:
Political Biographies:
Berridge, W. J. 2017. Hasan Al-Turabi: Islamist Politics and Democracy in Sudan. Cambridge University Press.
Del Vicario, D. 2023. “The Lives, Deaths, and Afterlives of John Garang: History-Making and Politics in Sudan and South Sudan.” Thesis.
Islamism and Religious Politics:
Salomon, Noah. 2016. For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State. Princeton University Press.
Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. 2013. Islamic Law and Society in the Sudan. Routledge.
Gallab, Abdullahi A. 2016. The First Islamist Republic: Development and Disintegration of Islamism in the Sudan. Routledge.
Pendle, Naomi Ruth. 2023. Spiritual Contestations–the Violence of Peace in South Sudan. Boydell and Brewer.
Elzobier, Ahmed. 2014. Political Islam: The Logic of Governance in Sudan. Author House.
Ahmed, Einas. 2007. “Political Islam in Sudan: Islamists and the Challenge of State Power (1989–2004).” In Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa, eds. Benjamin F. Soares and René Otayek. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 189–208.
Warburg, Gabriel. 1995. “Mahdism and Islamism in Sudan.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27(2): 219–36.
Voll, John. 1979. “The Sudanese Mahdī: Frontier Fundmentalist.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10(2): 145–66.
Musso, Giorgio. 2017. “Sudan and the Unbearable Lightness of Islamism: From Revolution to Rentier Authoritarianism.” The International Spectator 52(4): 112–28.
Sudan's Popular Revolution:
Berridge, W. J. 2014. Civil Uprisings in Modern Sudan: The “Khartoum Springs” of 1964 and 1985. Bloomsbury.
Cross, Harry. 2025. Undoing a Revolution: Sudan and the Politics of Debt. Oxford University Press.
Hassan, Mai. 2024. “Coordinated Dis-Coordination.” American Political Science Review 118(1): 163–77.
Grewal, Sharan. 2021. “Why Sudan Succeeded Where Algeria Failed.” Journal of Democracy 32(4): 102–14.
Hassan, Mai, and Ahmed Kodouda. 2019. “Sudan’s Uprising: The Fall of a Dictator.” Journal of Democracy 30(4): 89–103.
Medani, Khalid Mustafa. 2025b. Revolutionary Sudan: The Challenges of Democracy After Autocracy. C Hurst & Company Publishers Limited.
Thomas, Edward, and Magdi El Gizouli. 2020. “Sudan’s Grain Divide: A Revolution of Bread and Sorghum.” London: Rift Valley Institute.
Berridge, Willow, Alex de Waal, and Justin Lynch. 2022. Sudan’s Unfinished Democracy: The Promise and Betrayal of a People’s Revolution. Oxford University Press.
Political Economy of Agriculture, Gold, and Oil:
Benjamin, A. 2023. “Marketing War. An Interview with Magdi El Gizouli.” Phenomenal World, September 30.
Elbadawi, Ibrahim, and Kabbashi Madani Suliman. 2018. “The Macroeconomics of the Gold Economy in Sudan.” In The Economic Research Forum (ERF).
Medani, Khalid Mustafa. 2022. Black Markets and Militants: Informal Networks in the Middle East and Africa. Cambridge University Press.
Elamin, Nisrin. 2018. “‘The Miskeet Tree Doesn’t Belong Here’: Shifting Land Values and the Politics of Belonging in Um Doum, Central Sudan.” Critical African Studies 10(1): 67–88.
Medani, Khalid Mustafa. 2025a. Militants and Militias: Authoritarian Legacies and the Political Economy of War in Sudan. American Political Science Association. APSA Mena Section.
Patey, Luke. 2014. The New Kings of Crude: China, India, and the Global Struggle for Oil in Sudan and South Sudan. Hurst.
Verhoeven, Harry. 2015. Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan. Cambridge University Press.
Joshua Craze. “Making Markets: South Sudan’s War Economy in the 21st Century.” World Peace Foundation.
Young, Alden. 2018. Transforming Sudan. Cambridge University Press.
Craze, Joshua. 2025a. “Black Gold, Liquid Metal: The Political Economy of Gold in Sudan.” Middle East & North Africa.
North-South conflict, South Sudan and Partition:
El-Tom, Abdullahi Osman. 2003. “Black Book of Sudan: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in Sudan.” TINABANTU: Journal of Advanced Studies of African Society 1(2).
Idris, Amir. 2018. South Sudan: Post-Independence Dilemmas. Routledge.
Khalid, Mansour. 2012. War and Peace In The Sudan: A Tale of Two Countries. Routledge.
Malwal, B. 2015. Sudan and South Sudan: From One to Two. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Slaves and Slavery:
Kenyon, Susan M. 2012. Spirits and Slaves in Central Sudan: The Red Wind of Sennar. Springer.
Jok, Jok Madut. 2001. War and Slavery in Sudan. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Sikainga, Ahmad Alawad. 2010. Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. University of Texas Press.
Johnson, Douglas H. 2013. “Sudanese Military Slavery from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century.” In Slavery, Routledge, 142–56.
Spaulding, Jay, and Stephanie Beswick. 1995. “Sex, Bondage, and the Market: The Emergence of Prostitution in Northern Sudan, 1750-1950.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 5(4): 512–34.
Civil-Military Relations:
De Waal, Alex. 2019. “Sudan: A Political Marketplace Framework Analysis.” World Peace Foundation.
Bartlett, Anne L. 2020. “Dismantling the 'deep State’ in Sudan.” Australasian Review of African Studies, The 41(1): 49–69.
Verhoeven, Harry. 2013. “The Rise and Fall of Sudan’s Al-Ingaz Revolution: The Transition from Militarised Islamism to Economic Salvation and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.” Civil Wars 15(2): 118–40.
Khālid, Manṣūr. 1990. The Government They Deserve: The Role of the Elite in Sudan’s Political Evolution. Kegan Paul International.
Civil war (2023-present):
Craze, Joshua. 2025b. “Sudan’s World War.” NLR/Sidecar.
Medani, Khalid Mustafa. 2025a. Militants and Militias: Authoritarian Legacies and the Political Economy of War in Sudan. American Political Science Association. APSA Mena Section.
Ethnic Conflict, Arabization:
Sharkey, Heather J. 2008. “Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity, and Race.” African Affairs 107(426): 21–43.
Idris, Amir. 2012. “Rethinking Identity, Citizenship, and Violence in Sudan.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44(2): 324–26.
Jok, Jok Madut. 2015. Sudan: Race, Religion, and Violence. Simon and Schuster.
Jok, Jok Madut, and Sharon Elaine Hutchinson. 1999. “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War and the Militarization of Nuer and Dinka Ethnic Identities.” African Studies Review 42(2): 125–45.
Famine:
Keen, David. 2008. The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine and Relief in Southwestern Sudan, 1983-1989. James Currey.
Makawi, Raga, Kholood Khair, and Joshua Craze. 2024. “Sudan Starves.” The New York Review of Books.
De Waal, Alex. 2005. Famine That Kills: Darfur, Sudan. Oxford University Press.
Darfur:
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2009. Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror. Pantheon Books.
Prunier, Gérard. 2017. Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide. Cornell University Press.
Lanz, David. 2009. “Save Darfur: A Movement and Its Discontents.” African Affairs 108(433): 669–77.
Left-wing politics:
Vezzadini, Elena. 2015. 31 Lost Nationalism: Revolution, Memory and Anti-Colonial Resistance in Sudan. Boydell & Brewer.
Himmat, Abdelwahab. 2019. “A History of the Sudanese Communist Party.” Ph.D. University of South Wales (United Kingdom). Thesis.
Ismael, Tareq. 2015. The Sudanese Communist Party: Ideology and Party Politics. Routledge.
Vezzadini, Elena. 2016. “Love at the Time of Independence. The Debates on Romantic Love in the Sudanese Left-Wing Press of the 1950s.” Égypte/Monde arabe (14): 197–221.
Hale, Sondra. 1986. “Sudanese Women and Revolutionary Parties: The Wing of the Patriarch.” MERIP Middle East Report (138): 25–30.
Gruenbaum, Ellen. 2005. “Feminist Activism for the Abolition of FGC in Sudan.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 1(2): 89–111.
Micro-histories:
Vezzadini, Elena, Iris Seri-Hersch, Lucie Revilla, Anael Poussier, and Mahassin Abdul Jalil. 2023. Ordinary Sudan, 1504–2019: From Social History to Politics from Below. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. (many good chapters).
Brown, Marie Grace. 2017. Khartoum at Night: Fashion and Body Politics in Imperial Sudan. Stanford University Press.
Older studies:
Fawzi, Saad Ed Din. 1957. The Labour Movement in the Sudan, 1946-1955. Oxford University Press.
Niblock, Tim. 1987. Class and Power in Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 1898-1985. Suny Press.
Kapteijns, Lidwien. 1989. “The Historiography of the Northern Sudan from 1500 to the Establishment of British Colonial Rule: A Critical Overview.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 22(2): 251–66.
Further sources:
Sudan Notes and Records (very old academic journal published by University of Khartoum)
Rift Valley Institute (their reports are quite good)
Atar network (Arabic online magazine, good analysis)
Magdi El Gizouli's Still Sudan blog.
FAO reports on Sudanese agriculture (often the international organizations have better record-keeping and data availability than the Sudanese government itself).
Literature:
Elhillo, Safia. 2021. Home Is Not a Country. Random House Children’s Books.
Elhillo, Safia. 2017. The January Children. University of Nebraska Press.
Aboulela, Leila. 2023. River Spirit. Grove Press.
Salih, Tayeb. 2009. Season of Migration to the North. New York Review of Books.
Poetry by Muhammad al-Fayturi
Poetry by Salah Ahmed Ibrahim
Films:
Our Beloved Sudan (2012)
Goodbye, Julia (2023)
Sudan, Remember Us (2024)
Talking About Trees (2019)
Beats of the Antonov (2014)
Anything by Gadalla Gubara (older)
Mutual aid, charity-giving: