David Lammy MP among impressive range of new SOAS practice-based appointments

3 August 2021

SOAS University of London is proud to announce the second cohort of practice-based associates who will bring their practical knowledge and professional expertise from across politics, development, the arts, economics, climate policy and activism to contribute to the mission of SOAS. The nominated posts include Professors of Practice, Global Fellows, Policy Fellows, and SOAS Community Fellows.

The School of Law will host alumnus Rt Hon David Lammy MP as a Professor of Practice. David graduated from the SOAS School of Law in 1993 with an LLB (Hons) degree, and went on to be the first black Briton to attend Harvard Law School. He was first elected to Parliament in 2000, as the MP for Tottenham. David is currently the Shadow Justice Secretary and held a number of Ministerial posts in the Labour government, including Minister for Culture and Minister for Higher Education.

Brian Kagoro will also be hosted as a Professor of Practice at the School of Law. Brian Kagoro is the Programme Support Division Director of the Africa Regional Office (AfRO) of the Open Society Foundation (OSF). Prior to that he was Founder and Executive Director of UHAI Africa Group, a governance and development consulting firm with operations in Johannesburg, Harare, and Nairobi. Brian is a Pan Africanist and a constitutional and economic relations lawyer.

The School of Arts will host alumnus Dr Gus Casely-Hayford as a Professor of Practice. Gus is an art historian who writes, lectures and broadcasts widely on African culture. He is currently Director of V&A East and has previously held the post of Executive Director of Arts Strategy, Arts Council England and Ex-Director of the Institute of International Visual Art. He has advised the United Nations and the Canadian, Dutch and Norwegian Arts Councils and the Tate Gallery.

Eliane Correa will be hosted as a SOAS Community Fellow in the School of Arts. Eliane is a pianist, MD and composer based between London and Havana; trained classically at the Luxembourg Conservatoire. She studied piano and composition at the renowned Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba, in 2005, then relocated to London in 2007 to study a BA & MA Ethnomusicology at SOAS.

Professor Barbara Buchner will be hosted as a Professor of Practice by the Centre for Sustainable Finance and the Centre for Global Finance hosts Professor Dirk Willem te Velde as a Professor of Practice.

Professor Buchner is the Global Managing Director at Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), a global climate finance and policy organization. CPI’s mission is to help governments, businesses, and financial institutions drive economic growth while addressing climate change. Dr. Buchner is also the Director of the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance, a climate finance incubator managed by CPI that solicits, shapes, and tests cutting edge finance instruments that resolve financing barriers and mobilize climate finance to the hardest sectors in emerging economies, including renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and sustainable infrastructure.

Professor te Velde is a Principal Research Fellow and Director for International Economic Development at ODI. He directs the Supporting Investment and Trade in Africa (SITA) and Supporting Economic Transformation (SET) Programmes and is Research Leader in the FCDO – ESRC Growth Research Programme.

Contributing their expertise to work alongside our Research & Enterprise Directorate on developing our capacity to create, inspire and learn about change, we have Srilatha Batliwala as a Professor of Practice and Dan Glass as a SOAS Community Fellow.

Srilatha Batliwala is a social activist, advocate of women's rights, scholar, and author of many books on empowerment of women. Srilatha sits on the international advisory council at the Institute for Human Rights and Business. She is their Senior Advisor for Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action. Her work focuses on building knowledge from practice, especially in the areas of women’s rights, empowerment, feminist movements and movement building, and feminist leadership.

Dan Glass is the networker for The Glass Is Half Full . Dan is an award-winning activist, mentor, performer and writer, using music, performance and protest to catalyse love, soul, revolution and justice in communities confronting injustice. Dan is an educator from the Training for Transformation (TfT) methodologies that are born out of the Anti-Apartheid movement.

SOAS’ research and regional Centres and Institutes, which bring together a networked critical mass of people working on some of the most pressing global issues of our times, will act as hosts for many of our practice-based appointees.

A series of ‘SOAS Conversations on Practice’ is planned for the autumn, which will showcase our professors of practice in conversation on the global issues of our times.

For further information, contact:

practice@soas.ac.uk