Claude Ake Visiting Chair
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Closing date: 20 January 2025
The Claude Ake Visiting Chair Programme is dedicated to honoring Professor Claude Ake's memory and invites internationally recognized senior scholars with professorial competence to apply. This programme is designed for social scientists from African universities who champion social justice and specialize in areas like war, peace, conflict resolution, human rights, democracy, and development. Scholars awarded the Chair will have the opportunity to pursue their own research while contributing to ongoing activities at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research of Uppsala University and the Nordic Africa Institute.
The Claude Ake Visiting Chair is a co-financed collaboration between the Department of Peace and Conflict Research External link, opens in new window., Uppsala University, and the Nordic Africa Institute.
The Claude Ake Visiting Chair External link, opens in new window. was set up in 2003 at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University (DPCR), in collaboration with the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) and with funding from the Swedish Government and Uppsala University.
The Chair honours the memory of Professor Claude Ake, a distinguished scholar, philosopher, teacher and humanist, who died tragically in 1996. The Chair is intended for scholars who, like Claude Ake, combine a profound commitment to scholarship with a strong advocacy for social justice. The Chair is open to social scientists working at African universities with problems related to war, peace, conflict resolution, human rights, democracy and development on the African continent.
The visiting chair holder is offered a conducive environment to pursue his or her own research, while there is also opportunity for lecturing, holding seminars and contributing to ongoing research activities at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research and the Nordic Africa Institute.
2024 Claude Ake Visiting Chair - Professor Nick Mdika Tembo
Nick Mdika Tembo is Professor of English in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Malawi. He is also a Research Fellow in the Department of English at University of the Free State, South Africa. He has previously held various managerial positions, including that of Head of Literary Studies Department at the University of Malawi, and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the Catholic University of Malawi. The primary focus of his research is in trauma and memory studies and his thematic fields include holocaust and genocide studies, childhood studies, child soldier narratives, African life writing, and social media technologies.
2023 Claude Ake Visiting Chair - Professor Shola Omotola
Shola Omotola is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Federal University, Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), where he has just completed his tenure in March 2023 as Deputy Vice Chancellor (Administration). He has served in carious other capacities in the university, including as Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences (Aug. 2018 - Feb. 2021), Director of Research and Development (Aug. 2017- July 2019), concurrent Head of Department of Political Science and Department of History and International Studies (Nov. 2016 - July, 2018), and as a member of the Governing Council of the University (2019-2023). He was, in 2017, a Visiting Professor at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Germany. He also had a Post-Doctoral fellowship in the Department of International Relations, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
2022 Claude Ake Visiting Chair - Professor Kwesi Aning
Kwesi Aning is full Professor and Director, Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research (FAAR), Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre since 2007. He served as the African Union’s first expert on counterterrorism from 2005-2007. In 2021, he served as a senior consultant on the Independent Project Evaluation on Support to the Maldives on Counter-terrorism, and in 2022 appointed as a UN Expert on evaluating the EU’s Counter-terrorism interventions in Sri Lanka. From October 2022, he will serve on the World Food Programs (WFP) Security Advisory Board. Research interests include peacekeeping economies, hybrid political orders, security sector reform, and stability operations.