Inaugural Lecture Series: Professors Awino Okech and Dan Plesch
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
6:00 pm to 8:15 pm
- Venue
- SOAS Gallery
- Room
- SOAS Gallery Lecture Theatre
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
Professor Awino Okech and Professor Dan Plesch from the Department of Politics and International Studies deliver their inaugural lectures from two different and distinctive themes.
Professor Okech's inaugural lecture is on 'Feminist worldmaking: On knowledge infrastructures and social transformation'. This lecture offers a historical overview of the socio-economic and political moments that shaped critical interventions by feminist intellectuals and movements across sections of Africa. In doing so, it foregrounds the role of feminist scholarship in nation and state-making discourses and its centrality in building just and equitable futures. The lecture draws on Professor Okech's work over the last 20 years in community organising, regional development programming, continental policy interventions, and academic research.
Professor Plesch's inaugural lecture will follow: 'Weapons Controls and Human Rights: Thinking globally acting globally'. This lecture engages with a range of international, historical and legal research, from 1980s investigations of secret NATO nuclear weapons reported by the Washington Post, to arguing the legal liability of heads of state for international crimes before the supreme court of France today. The lecture proposes using Second World War-era antifascist security politics based on human rights and weapons controls against current reactionary threats.
About the speakers
Professor Awino Okech
Professor Awino Okech is a Professor of Feminist and Security Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies.
Professor Okech's teaching and research sits at the nexus of gender, sexuality, conflict, and security studies. Alongside her teaching, Professor Okech also serves as the founding Director of the Feminist Centre for Racial Justice, which focuses on the majority world as geographies from which to build feminist imaginaries of “race”.
Prior to joining SOAS, Professor Okech worked for over a decade in the development sector across various sub-regions in Africa, supporting women's rights organisations and local movements working at the intersection of gender and conflict. This work remains central to her research, teaching, and public-facing work.
Professor Dan Plesch
Professor Dan Plesch is Professor of Diplomacy and Strategy at SOAS University of London and is a "door tenant" at the legal chambers of 9 Bedford Row, London.
His most recent research includes: Masters of the Air: Strategic Stability and Conventional Strikes; Open Source Investigations in the Age of Google; and Women and the UN: a new history of women’s international human rights.
He is the author of Human Rights After Hitler, which was featured on Netflix and reported on by US National Public Radio and other international media. His previous books include: America Hitler and the UN, Wartime Origins and the Future UN (with Prof. Weiss), and the Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace. He leads research on the UN, war crimes, and disarmament.
Plesch read history at Nottingham, qualified in social work and public administration from Bristol, and has a PhD in political science from Keele. In 1986 he founded the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and directed it from Washington DC until 2001, when he became the Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London.
SOAS Inaugural Lecture Series
The SOAS Inaugural Lecture Series recognises that research is an integral part of university life, and offers a platform for newly appointed and promoted professors to share their significant contributions to their field while also showcasing the overall strength, depth and vitality of research at SOAS.
