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Ian Leslie Campbell is an international consultant on community development and environment, and a historian specialising in Ethiopia.

On one hand, Campbell is known for his work on development and environment, particularly protecting cultural heritage from the impacts of development projects, as exemplified by his co-authorship with Arlene Fleming of the World Bank global safeguard policy, Physical Cultural Resources. On the other hand, he is known for his pioneering research in the field of Ethiopian studies, to which he is a regular contributor.

Campbell publishes and lectures on Ethiopian cultural and modern history, and Ethiopian heritage management. He was Chairman of the 8th International Conference on the History of Ethiopian Art and Architecture, and is a founder-member of the Ethiopian association, Heritage Watch, as well as a long-serving member of the Executive Committee of the Society of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University.

Campbell is recognised as a leading authority on the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1936-1941), a topic on which he has written several books, each based on original research in Ethiopia. In recent years his work has gained considerable attention in Italy.

=Academic Career=

Born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, he attended the 14th-century Wisbech Grammar School, where he excelled in both arts and sciences. While directing the University Arts Festival, Campbell earned an BSc (hons.) at the University of Leicester in Mathematical Statistics, Economics and the History of Japan. He went on to study Operations Research at the National Coal Board and the University of Brunel.

His first work on the Italian occupation was The Plot to Kill Graziani (Addis Ababa University Press, 2010). "Reading Campbell's book is like watching an action movie". Featured in Eland's acclaimed travel series, Ethiopia Through Writers' Eyes, it still stands as the first and only detailed analysis of the assassination attempt that triggered the 1937 massacre of Addis Abeba, referred to as Yekatit 12. Based largely on eye-witness accounts, “this work represents a significant contribution to the advancement of our acquaintances of one of the darkest pages of Italian domination in Ethiopia”.

The Massacre of Debre Libanos (AAU Press, 2014) revealed for the first time the truth about one of the world's greatest massacres of Christian clergy and pilgrims. An hour-by-hour account of the atrocity, Campbell's findings inspired the docu-film Debre Libanos by the Italian Catholic Church television channel tv2000, and were featured in the award-winning documentary If Only I Were That Warrior.

The Addis Ababa Massacre (Hurst, London & Oxford University Press, New York, 2017), a Financial Times Best History Book of the Year, also won praise from a wide spectrum of reviewers. "... meticulous work" (The Economist); "... a horrific tale, told with verve and a sense of moral passion, but also with the meticulous skill of a detective and a historian" (Times Literary Supplement). This account uncovered previously unpublished details of one of Fascism's greatest yet little known atrocities, which took the lives of around 20% of the population of Ethiopia's capital city.

Campbell’s research into the massacre of Debre Libanos began to create awareness in Italy of the nature of the occupation of Ethiopia, challenging long-standing beliefs in Italy that it was a benign administration. Release of The Addis Ababa Massacre in Italian translation (Il Massacro di Addis Abeba, Rizzoli, Milan) intensified this awareness. Campbell’s findings were further disseminated in Italian by Professor Paulo Borruso, triggering a campaign to ‘decolonise’ public spaces in Italy, led by the Wuming Foundation. The campaign, currently gaining momentum, involves challenging local authorities regarding the public siting of statues of military commanders of the Fascist period, and the changing of street names in towns across the country dedicated to senior officers of the occupying forces, who are now being increasingly regarded as war criminals.

In Holy War - The Untold Story of Catholic Italy's Crusade Against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, due out in June 2021, Campbell describes how bishops of the Italian Catholic Church facilitated the invasion of Ethiopia by sanctifying it as a crusade against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which they denounced as heretical and schismatic. The author exposes the consequent martyrdom of thousands of Ethiopian clerics and the extensive burning and looting of hundreds of monasteries and churches of the Ethiopian Church.

=Private Life= Ian Campbell is one of three sons of John Alan Campbell, a Wisbech-born mathematician, and Joan Wakeford. He is married to Janet Lugonzo, eldest daughter of Isaac Lugonzo, a well-known Kenyan public figure and former mayor of Nairobi. They have two daughters and five grandchildren. Campbell divides his time between Nairobi and Addis Ababa.