2020-21 Senior AfOx Visiting Fellow Professor Workineh Kelbessa
Six researchers from Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia and Liberia have been awarded the 2020-21 Senior AfOx Visiting Fellowships. The Senior Visiting Fellowships programme allows outstanding African researchers to spend up to a year at the University of Oxford. Professor Workineh Kelbessa is among the researchers awarded the 2020-21 Senior AfOx Visiting Fellowship.
Workineh Kelbessa is a Professor of Philosophy at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. Professor Kelbessa is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Initiative's Senior Visiting Fellowship Programme.
Professor Kelbessa has over 30 years of experience in teaching and research. His research interests include African philosophy, and indigenous knowledge, environmental philosophy, environmental ethics, development ethics, climate ethics, water ethics, globalization and the philosophy of love and sex. He has published extensively in a wide range of fields. His work tackles significant problems the world faces, especially pressingly in Africa's nations. His most recent publications include "African Worldviews, Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development" (2021) and Philosophical Responses to Global Challenges with African Examples (edited with Tenna Dewo), due to be published by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy in 2022.
In 2012, he was appointed a member of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) by the Director-General of UNESCO, on which he served until 2019. He was a member of the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) and a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. He is currently a member of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and serves as a member of several other international professional associations. Moreover, he was a member of the Editorial Board of Environmental Ethics and has served on the Editorial Boards of various journals, including Health Care Philosophy and Policy, the African Journal of Environmental Ethics and Values, and the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics.
While at the University of Oxford, Professor Kelbessa will examine water ethics and its contribution to sustainable water resources management. He will explore different ethical principles (indigenous and modern) that can play an important role in managing water resources.
You can find more information about Professor Kelbessa at Workineh Kelbessa | College of Social Science