Ngozi Edeagu

Her doctoral research, ‘Writing back to Empire: Newspapers, Non-Elites and Decolonisation in the Global Public Sphere, 1937-1957,’ examines how non- and semi-literate people supported the decolonisation process in colonial Nigeria. Using the often neglected bottom-top analytical approach, this research investigates how non-elite groups (loosely defined as semi- and non-literate groups) in colonial Nigeria from 1937 to 1957 engaged with and shaped the decolonisation agenda using a local newspaper. This research has significance beyond academia. For development practitioners, it will help reduce (information) inequalities and increase community participation by demonstrating how news content was historically disseminated, digested and debated particularly in the absence of modern technology, infrastructure and wide spread illiteracy that still exists today. For African national governments, it will provide useful contexts in understanding the socio-economic environments that have led people to debate and act on issues that affect them.

While at AE-FUNAI university, she was a two-term Chair of the Faculty of Humanities Public Relations and Information Committee. In that capacity she raised one million naira for a faculty project from the prestigious Tony Elumelu Foundation and helped organise several faculty conferences and events. She has been peer reviewing for a Taylor and Francis academic journal since 2017 based on solicitation. Ngozi has also supervised a number of undergraduate final and third year research projects at the Department of History and Strategic Studies.

Before her entry into academia, Ngozi Edeagu worked over ten years in the corporate sector for global institutions like Citi Nigeria and the Oxford University Press, UK and as a school administrator for a COBIS (Council of British International Schools) institution in Nigeria. She also has a strong interest in impacting and improving educational opportunities for young people in Nigeria through higher education and/or public policy avenues.

Ngozi Edeagu holds a first class honours degree in history from the University of Nigeria and a Masters in African History from the University of Oxford.