Africa Oxford Initiative Announces Inaugural AfOx Visiting Scholars

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The Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx), in association with St Edmund Hall, Christ Church College and St. Peter’s College has appointed three visiting Fellows from African universities under its first AfOx Visiting Scholars Programme (AVSP). The inaugural AfOx visiting scholars are Dr Elima Jedy-Agba from Nigeria, Prof Gerald Mazarire from Zimbabwe, and Dr David Ssevviiri from Uganda.

The AVSP was set up to facilitate collaborations between academics at The University of Oxford and selected fellows, as well as to foster research and teaching excellence in research and academic institutions. Academics working in any African institute are eligible for the programme, and the first call drew over 350 applications.

Dr Anne Makena, the Program Coordinator of AfOx, said the Initiative is very excited to welcome the 2017 AfOx Visiting Scholars and believes that their experience will be both intellectually engaging and impactful – for Oxford and their home institutions.

“We had an overwhelming and fantastic response, meaning the demand for such a program is very high. Most of the applications were great, and about a third of them were quite exceptional. It was disheartening to have to turn away some of these excellent applicants and we have therefore been working towards finding other ways to support these brilliant academics.”
“In addition, we have secured more positions for the next cohort of the AVSP, in the hope that we meet more of the demand.”


THE AFOX VISITING SCHOLARS

Dr. Elima Jedy-Agba MBBCH, MSc. PhD. is a research fellow and coordinator of the International Research Centre of Excellence (IRCE) at the Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria. She has a first degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Calabar, Nigeria, a Master’s degree in Public Health and a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health, both from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom.

She is a World Cancer Research Fund International Fellow and a 50 for 50 fellow of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Her research interests include cancer registration and epidemiology with specific focus on breast cancer and HIV associated cancers in sub-Saharan Africa. At the University of Oxford, her research fellowship will focus on trends in cervical cancer incidence and prevalence and projecting the future burden of cervical cancer in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dr. Jedy-Agba will be based at Christ Church College and aims to use her time in Oxford under the AVSP to foster collaborations between the IRCE IHVN and the University of Oxford’s Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU) of the Nuffield department of Population Health. Her research proposal will focus on ‘Trends and Projections in Cervical Cancer in Sub-Saharan Africa’ and this will be done in collaboration with Prof. Donald Maxwell Parkin and Prof. Dame Valerie Beral of CTSU- Nuffield Department of population Health in Oxford. She hopes this research project could yield potentially important contributions to the literature in cancer research in developing countries and set the foundation for more future research collaborations.


Prof. Gerald Chikozho Mazarire is an Associate Professor in the History Department of the Midlands State University in Gweru, Zimbabwe. He holds a DPhil in History from the University of Zimbabwe. His research interests are on Zimbabwe, pre-colonial communities, liberation movements and the state. He was admitted as a Fellow of the American Council for Learned Societies in the African Humanities Programme in October 2013. He has various research and academic responsibilities which include being  Editor of the journal Critical African Studies; Editorial Board Member of the Kronos: Journal of Southern African History, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia on African History: Oxford University Press amongst others.

While in Oxford at St Peter’s College on the AVSP, Prof. Mazarire looks to strengthen collaborative efforts with various Oxford University researchers and academics which include Prof. Jocelyn Alexander – with whom he is organizing a Journal of Southern African Studies sponsored conference on the ‘International Connections of African Liberation Movements’ to be held in 2018. Also Prof. Gerald Mazarire hopes to continue close collaborations with Dr. Miles Tendi. He also hopes to gain access to various literature on Zimbabwe’s political history found at Rhodes House, the Bodleian Library and portal systems of various Oxford Libraries.


Dr. David Ssevviiri is a Departmental Head of Mathematics at Makerere University in Uganda, and overall coordinator of the Eastern Africa Universities Mathematics Programme. He is a Senior Lecturer and an active researcher in the area of algebra. However, he also has research interests in algebraic geometry and representation theory of finite dimensional algebras. He holds a PhD in Mathematics from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Univeristy (NMMU) in South Africa. He also holds a BSc Ed in Mathematics and Chemistry, an MSc in Mathematics from Makerere University; and an MSc in Mathematics Cum-Laude from NMMU.

In Oxford Dr. Ssevviiri will be based at St Peter’s College and will conduct research on Local cohomology and cousin complexes, and advance research relations between the Oxford School of Mathematics and Makerere University’s Department of Mathematics. He will be hosted by Prof. Yakov Kremnitzer at the Oxford Mathematical Institute.

Tags: AfOx Visiting Scholars, Africa Oxford, Dr. David Ssevviiri, Dr. Elima Jedy-Agba, Prof. Gerald Chikozho Mazarire