Research Professor, World Christianity and African Studies, DePaul University I was ordained a Catholic priest in my home country of Nigeria, and in addition to my native language, Igbo, I speak French, English and Italian. My educational background includes an MA in theology; an MA in educational leadership; an ecclesiastical licentiate in sacred theology (with a concentration in the Christological images in Luke-Acts and African theologies); and a PhD in theology from the University of St Michael’s College at the University of Toronto (with a concentration in African Christian history’s cross-cultural currents); and a second PhD from the University of South Africa in the sociology of education, specializing in equity and multicultural education in faith-based schooling. In addition to teaching at DePaul, I am also a visiting professor at Tangaza University College’s Institute of Social Ministry and Mission in Nairobi, and the founder of the Canadian Samaritans for Africa, a nonprofit that works directly with African women to help them alleviate poverty. I also am the editor of the African Christian Studies Series for Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers; a commentator on Africa, religion, and politics for Canada Television (CTV) and Al-Jazeera; a columnist for CNN African Voices, Catholic Register and Premium Times; and a blogger for Huffington Post’s World Affairs, Religion, and Black Voices sections. My areas of interest are cross-cultural studies, African intellectual and political history, African Christianity and the world Church, equity and diversity in faith-based education and ministry, religion and social transformation, and religion and violence. I coordinate CWCIT’s new African Catholicism Project, a network of established and emerging African Christian scholars to promote mentorship and diverse research in African Christianity and to make this scholarship more visible beyond Africa. Since 2017, my research has been centred on reform and renewal in the Church, especially following Pope Francis' call for a missionary conversion and the crisis of clerical sexual abuse. The fruit of my research is being developed in my forthcoming book: Rome and the Margins: Reform and the Renewal in the Catholic Church Beyond the West. Some of my recent works include: The Face of Africa: Looking Beyond the Shadows; Love, Joy and Sex: African Conversation on Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia and the Gospel of Family in a Divided World; A Poor and Merciful Church: The Illuminative Ecclesiology of Pope Francis; Church and Development in Africa.
Professor of Avian Behavioural Ecology, Macquarie University I am an evolutionary biologist and have spent most of my career to date investigating how the reproductive behaviour of birds drives the process of speciation and the amazing diversity of birds that we hear and see around us. Reproductive behaviour can be broken down into many components, such as: the expression of ornaments like colourful plumage; the process of choosing a social partner to breed with; how many offspring to have; how many sons or daughters to have; how much investment you make in current or future offspring. All of these decisions affect the quality of the resulting offspring. It is the variation in quality amongst individuals in a population that the process of natural selection acts upon. The best quality individuals are likely to be more attractive, live longer and produce more offspring than individuals or lower quality. Over generations, the population will change as a result of this non-random selection and eventually a new species is born. Birds have provided a disproportionate level of insight into evolutionary biology over the past hundred years because they are well surveyed, well understood and highly amenable to morphological and behavioural research. Developing a better knowledge of avian reproductive behaviour increases our capacity to conserve biodiversity and understand ourselves, because most birds share the same socially monogamous mating system as humans – a system that is actually very rare among other mammals.
Chief Research Scientist and Director, Centre for Microbiology Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute Sam Kariuki is Chief Research Scientist and Director, Centre for Microbiology Research at KEMRI in Nairobi and a Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute International Fellow. He is visiting Professor of Tropical Microbiology, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, UK. He is Co-ordinator of Medical Microbiology postgraduate course, Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases, KEMRI. He has research interest in the epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance of enteric bacterial pathogens, including invasive non-typhoidal salmonellosis (NTS) and typhoid fever, Shigella spp, Vibrio cholerae and Escherichia coli. He is Chair, Global Antimicrobial Resistance Partnership (GARP)-Kenya chapter and in 2014-16, led the initiative for development of the Situational Analysis on AMR in Kenya culminating in the National Action Plan Draft document. He has Authored/co-authored over 130 papers in peer-reviewed journals and 3 text books on Antimicrobial resistance and Food Safety.
Canada150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics and Visiting Professor, WiSER Wits University, Carleton University Professor Shireen Hassim is a Canada150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics, Carleton University and Visiting Professor, WiSER Wits University. She has written and edited several books, including No Shortcuts to Power: African Women in Politics and Policy Making (Zed Books, 2003) and Go Home or Die Here: Violence, Xenophobia, and the Reinvention of Difference in South Africa (Wits University Press, 2008) and The ANC Women’s League (Ohio University Press, 2014). Her book Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006) won the Victoria Shuck Award from the American Political Science Association. Her most recent book is Hassim obtained her PhD from York University (Canada). She is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and an elected member of its ASSAf Council.
PhD Researcher in Human Geography, Loughborough University Sophie Milnes is a PhD researcher exploring how the rising trend of ‘Character Education’ in the UK has impacted the classroom and its broader nexus of political, cultural and social relations. Her doctoral research examines the reshaping of educational spaces, specifically military ethos initiatives in schools. Her previous work has explored young people’s transitions to higher education in England, UK. Her wider research interests include youth geographies and social difference.
Reader in Leisure and Tourism Management, University of Central Lancashire Dr Sean Gammon has been writing and researching in sport tourism for twenty-five years; writing and managing the first undergraduate degree programme on the subject. Sean’s research interests mostly focus on sport tourist experiences, though more recently he has been exploring the breadth and significance of sports heritage in generating tourism. In addition to his work in sport tourism, he continues to contribute to the field of leisure studies, primarily focussing on the health-giving properties of leisure states of mind, as well as the use of leisure in education. Sean also supervises PhD and DBA programmes on numerous topics connected to leisure, heritage, leadership, sport and tourism.
