Chika C. Mba
University of Ghana
Institute of African Studies
Dr Chika Mba (Postdoctoral Fellow/Hub Coordinator) Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. Areas of Research: African Philosophy, global justice, decolonisation, Frantz Fanon, academic freedom. Chika Mba’s teaching and research cut across the broad domains of African philosophy, decolonial thought, Frantz Fanon’s philosophy of culture, human rights, and global justice. His work centres the understanding of Africa and Africans in key debates in philosophy and the humanities more broadly, raising challenging questions to hegemonic discourses about human nature, global justice, (global) culture and human rights. His recent publications connected to the OU project include: Achieving Global Justice through Decolonising Human Dignity (2022) Caribbean Journal of Philosophy; Africa, the Global Order, and the Politics of Aid (2022) South African Journal of Philosophy, DOI: 10.1080/02580136.2022.2055264; Is Afropolitanism a Colonial Mentality? (2022) Journal of Contemporary African Philosophy, https://www.domuni.eu/en/research/international-journal-jocap/; Frantz Fanon’s Political Ethics, in N. Wariboko and T. Falola (eds.) Palgrave Handbook of African Social Ethics (2020), Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36490-8_17.
His current research, under the OU project, draws from the conceptual apparatuses of psycho-social theory and decolonial synthesis therapy to examine historical and ongoing colonial and neo-colonial processes and parameters that exacerbate the drivers of language marginality in previously colonised societies. Mba is currently involved in interrelated collaborative research projects, including Decolonization, the Disciplines, and the University. He is the recipient of many international research fellowships and sponsorship awards, including the African Humanities Programme by the American Council of Learned Societies; Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA’s) Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing; the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University’s (UHURU) Postdoctoral Fellowship. He currently holds one of the five Mellon 2022-2023 Scholars at Risk Academic Freedom Fellowship where he is working on the project “Academic Freedom, Neoliberal Marketisation of Higher Education, and Democracy in Africa”.
Mba convenes and coordinates a popular reading club under the OU project, entitled “Reading Decolonisation in Africa Today”.