March 30, 2023
Linda Blaser
Desmond Odugu awarded the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship
Associate Professor of Education Desmond Odugu was awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program to travel to Nigeria to work with University of Nigeria, Nsukka on multiple research initiatives and curricula innovations that seek to develop indigenous decolonial approach to language and eduction as well as the historiography of education.
“This fellowship comes at a time when academics across the world are wrestling with the coloniality of knowledge/power that structures academic scholarship from its very foundation. My entire intellectual commitment is a decolonial project, and this fellowship provides an opportunity for me to work with brilliant African scholars at Nigeria’s first full-fledged and first autonomous university to explore decolonial futures of knowledge beyond familiar disciplinary practices.”
Odugu will be working with UNN professors, including Dr. Chidi Ugwu, who just completed a fellowship at the Harvard University Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, to develop innovative research tools that can guide researchers for years to come. Odugu’s fellowship project is one of 63 new projects that pair African Diaspora scholars with higher education institutions and collaborators in Africa to work together on curriculum co-development, collaborative research, graduate training and mentoring activities in 2023.
“This fellowship provides an opportunity for me to work with brilliant African scholars at Nigeria’s first full-fledged and first autonomous university,” Associate Professor of Education Desmond Odugu.
According to Dr. Chidi Ugwu, “as scholars in an African institution whose motto is ‘to restore the dignity of man,’ we hold a strong belief that the task of improving the overall quality of life of Africans requires the collaborative contribution of scholars, both on the continent and in the Diaspora, whose work seeks to decolonize knowledge traditions and remnant practices through which imperialism continues to shape life on the continent. Dr. Odugu’s work does precisely this. So, we are delighted by this opportunity of sustained engagement with him and for the expertise he brings.”
The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, now in its tenth year, is designed to strengthen capacity at the host institutions and develop long-term, mutually-beneficial collaborations between universities in Africa and the United States and Canada. It is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with the Association of African Universities. Nearly 600 African Diaspora Fellowships have now been awarded for scholars to travel to Africa since the program’s inception in 2013.
This latest award comes just months after Odugu delivered a keynote lecture at the History of Education Society (HES) conference in Exeter, England in November 2022. The HES conference brought together world-class expert historians, educators, archivists, and scholars from around the world to engage on key issues in the field and to chart the future of the field.
Odugu’s lecture, “Imperial Palimpsest in History of Education: Curation as Method, Episteme, and Politics in Imaginaries of Progress,” raised fundamental questions about the historiographic practices of the history of education, how these practices apply to the history of education in Africa, and how response to these issues will define the future of the field.
Related Links:
- Learn more about Associate Professor Desmond Odugu
- Explore the Department of Education at Lake Forest College
- NPR turns to Desmond Odugu for expert insight