Academic Visitors

Tunde Decker is Africa-Oxford (Af-Ox) Fellow, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford. He is interested in the thought and act processes of the underclass in Lagos, Nigeria and Africa in the colonial and post-colonial periods. He is currently Ag. Head of Department, History and International Studies, Osun State University, Nigeria where he is Senior Lecturer. He holds B.A. (Hons.), M.A. and Ph.D degrees in History of the University of Lagos and is Fellow of the Ife Institute of Advanced Studies and Fellow of the Lagos Studies Association. He was 2016/2017 Leventis Fellow and Visiting Scholar, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and has held travel grants of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is author of Matrix of Inherited Identity: A Historical Exploration of the Underdog Phenomenon in Nigeria’s Relationship Strategies 1960-2011, A History of Aviation in Nigeria 1925-2005; and co-editor of For Nature and for People: The Story of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation since 1980.

Professor David Everatt, Head of the Wits School of Governance, has over 25 years of experience in applied socio-economic and development research, political and governance reform, designing and implementing monitoring systems, and programme evaluation, across sub-Saharan Africa.

He is the former Executive Director of CASE, founding partner of Strategy & Tactics (winner of two Impumulelo Black Empowerment awards), and founding Director of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory. David was responsible for path-breaking research into youth marginalisation in South Africa in the early 1990s; his research into political violence was quoted at length by Nelson Mandela at the UN; he was the chief evaluator of the South African Constitutional Assembly between 1995 and 1997; and has researched issues from poverty and inequality to urbanism to class formation and voting behaviour.

He was Vice-President (sub-Saharan Africa) for the 'Sociology of Youth' committee of the International Sociological Association for 14 years, and now sits on their Advisory Board, serves on the Board of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, and chairs the National Statistics Council.

Julia Hornberger and Emmanuel Rotimi are leading African scholars who write on various aspects of policing. Hornberger does close ehthnographic work with South African police, while Rotimi works on the Nigerian police force and its relation to Nigerian democracy.       Both were in Oxford thanks to a British Academy International Partnership and Mobility Grant and presented at a workshop called 'Reconsidering Policing in Africa'.

Hylton White heads the Anthropology Department at Wits University in Johannesburg. He has been conducting ongoing ethnographic research among young people in South Africa's eastern seaboard for the last twenty years. He writes the relationship between young   people and the dead and on youth, work and unemployment. Hylton was in Oxford as a Visiting Oppenheimer Fellow.

Dr Lovise Aalen (Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute) spent the 2011-12 academic year with us. During this time she worked on two book projects, one on the politics of post war power sharing in the Sudans and the other on the concept of the developmental state in the context of Ethiopian politics. She also gave a guest lectures for the MSc African Studies, presented at an African Studies seminar and was a panelist for the Horn of Africa Seminar group’s Ethiopian Politics Roundtable discussion.

Professor Adam Habib (Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Johannesburg) joined us during Hilary and Trinity term 2012 as an Oppenheimer Visiting Fellow.  He completed a book on the relationship between the state, the ANC and the Unions in South Africa and participated in a weekly discussion group on South Africa.  He also presented seminars on his work and lectured to the masters students on comparative democratisation. During his stay Prof Habib contributed to media coverage on Southern Africa both in that region and in the UK.

Dr Noor Nieftagodian (Senior Lecturer, History, University of the Witwatersrand) was an Oppenheimer Visiting Fellow at the Centre during Hilary term 2012.  He worked on popular protest on the Witwatersrand, South Africa during the 1940s and 1950s and completed article publications dealing both with historical and contemporary popular politics.  He participated in a weekly discussion group on South Africa, presented a seminar and gave the keynote at the annual Researching Africa Day on community engagement in historical research.

Dr Terri Ochiagha (Assistant Professor of English, University of Alicante) joined us in Trinity term 2012 to work on the concluding phase of her research project on the history of the Government College, Umuahia in the emergence of Nigerian literature.

Dr Helene Maria Kyed (Danish Institute for International Studies) joined us during Trinity Term 2011. Helene worked on traditional authority in Mozambique before moving into the study of community policing and internal security sector reform in Sub-Saharan Africa. In June Helene presented a paper at the Thursday seminar on The Politics of Legal Pluralism: the Case of Community Policing in Mozambique and Swaziland.

Jacob Rasmussen (Ph.D. fellow, International Development Studies, Roskilde University & Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims RCT) joined us during Michaelmas Term 2010 and conducted research on the Mungiki movement in Kenya. His work is centered on mobilisation, youth, conflict and politics.

Dr Apuuli Phillip Kasaija (Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Makerere University Kampala) has researched the role of the International Criminal Court in Northern Uganda and Great Lakes Region of Africa. He has previously served as the Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution Advisor at the Inter-governmental Authority on Development Secretariat, Republic of Djibouti (2008); and Assistant IGAD Facilitator for Somalia Peace and National Reconciliation, Ethiopia (2009). While at the Centre he worked on a project entitled 'The Possibility of Establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Uganda', funded by the British Academy.

Dr Clive Glaser (Associate Professor, History Department, University of the Witwatersrand) joined us in Michaelmas Term 2010. He has worked on the social history of youth in Johannesburg, including examinations of sexual practices and crime. He began a new project while with the Centre at Oxford: the history of Portuguese immigrants in South Africa.

Dr Jaqui Goldin (Associate Professor, University of the Western Cape, Integrated Water Resources Management Programme) joined us for Trinity Term 2010. In her capacity as Waternet Chair for Water and Society, she worked on ways to integrate the Capability Approach into discourse on water. She is visiting the African Studies Centre as an Oppenheimer Fellow.

Professor Peter Alexander (University of Johannesburg) joined us for Trinity Term 2010. With support from the Oppenhiemer Fund he worked towards the completion of two projects: a history of Witbank's coal miners and 'Classifying Soweto'.

Ms Monika Sommer (Hamburg University), was a visiting scholar at the African Studies Centre in 2009 while working on her PhD project 'Between Reconciliation and Retaliation: Local Perceptions of Justice and Peace', a study of the regional state of Gambella in Ethiopia.

Dr Wafula Okumu (Institute for Strategic Studies, Pretoria) joined us in Trinity Term 2009, to participate in a workshop featuring his current research on border conflicts in eastern Africa.

Professor Peter Little (University of Kentucky) visited the Centre for one month at the beginning of Michaelmas Term 2008. An anthropologist with wide-ranging interests, Peter is perhaps best known for his path-breaking work on the social and political economy of Somalia's collapsed state. 

Dr Godwin Murunga (Kenyatta University College, Nairobi) joined in October 2008, to participate in a workshop on Kenyan politics.  Godwin is currently working on a study of Kenya's recent political troubles.

Professor Peter Delius (University of the Witwatersrand) visited at the start of Michaelmas 2008 supported by the Oppenheimer Fund, to continue his historical research on South Africa.

Professor Jean Comaroff (Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College, University of Chicago) visited Oxford as our North American Visiting Fellow in Trinity Term 2008. While in Oxford, Professor Comaroff worked on a paper about detection and palpable anxiety in contemporary South Africa as part of a larger study of the culture of policing and the "metaphysics of disorder" in the postcolony. She also prepared a Max Weber lecture -- given in Florence in June 2008 -- on Pentecostalism, mediation, and the quest for sovereignty in Africa and beyond.

Dr Chima Korieh came to Oxford in 2008 under the British Academy's Partnership Scheme. While here he worked on the completion of a manuscript on Nigerian writers from the 1940s.

Dr Jonny Steinberg was with us for Michaelmas Term 2007, supported by the Oppenheimer Trust. He was then writing a report on policing in South Africa, but also ran a book club with our students focussing on his novel Midlands, and gave a seminar on his most recent book on HIV-AIDS in rural South Africa.

John Githongo, former Ethics and Governance Permanent Secretary in Kenya's Office of the President, was attached to the Centre and St Antony's College from 2006 until August 2008. While in Oxford John continued his work on governance and corruption in Africa. He has now taken a position with World Vision, based in Nairobi.

Dr Mucha Musemwa spent Hilary and Trinity Terms of 2008 at the Centre, working on the history of social movements in Southern Africa through the Oppenheimer Trust. He returned to South Africa to take up a position in the History Department at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Professor Richard Waller was our North American Visiting Fellow in African Studies for Hilary and Trinity Terms in 2007. He teaches African History at Bucknell University, where he has also served as Head of Department. Professor Waller is a renowned authority on the Maa-speaking peoples of eastern Africa, and is best known for the path-breaking collection of essays Being Maasai (James Currey: Oxford, 1993). He currently writes on Maasai history in the twentieth century.

Dr Peter Lekgoathi of the Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand, visited Oxford as an Oppenheimer Fellow attached to St Antony's College.  While at the Centre he worked on ethnicity and identity politics in Mpumalanga, South Africa, and on vernacular broadcasting.

William Gumede was attached to the Centre over 2006 and 2007, before taking up a position with the Royal Africa Society as Director of the Africa-Asia Centre in London.  William is a renowned writer and commentator on South African politics.  His biography of Mbeki was published while he was with the Centre.