Dr Ola Osman
- Assistant Professor of African Politics
- Fixed-Term Lecturer
Contact
Location
- Department of Politics and International Studies
- The Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP
About
Dr. Ola Osman is an Assistant Professor of African Politics at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow at Trinity Hall, and a senior gender consultant with the United Nations World Food Programme. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Collective Healing Initiative convened by UNESCO’s Routes of Enslaved Peoples Project. She earned her Ph.D. in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and her Master’s degree in Women’s Studies from the University of Oxford, supported by the Clarendon Scholarship and the Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud Scholarship. Her interdisciplinary research reframes what are often described as “ethnic” wars in Africa by situating them within the longer history of Atlantic slavery. Her current work focuses on social inclusion, conflict, climate change, and food security in Ethiopia’s Afar Region.
Other Professional Activities
- Senior Gender Consultant for the United Nations World Food Programme (Addis Ababa)
- Advisory Board for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Routes of Enslaved People
- Editorial Board for the Journal of Dialogue Studies, special issue: Intergenerational Dialogue for Well-Being Futures: Theories, Practices, and Policy Pathways
Research
Research interests
- International Relations
- African wars
- Ethnicity and conflict
- Liberia and West Africa
- Transatlantic slavery
- Racial capitalism
- Global anti-Blackness
- Gender
- Women and war
Key publications:
- Osman, O. (2022) “Rethinking the Liberian Predicament in Anti-Black Terms”, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 27(3-4), 34-48, DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2022.2093933
- Osman, O. (2025) ‘Meditations on the Dead, the Dying and the Displaced: Theorising Structural Anti-Blackness as the Root Cause of Africa’s “Forever Wars”’, in S. Gill (ed.) Beyond Inhumanity: Collective Healing, Social Justice and Global Flourishing. Berlin: De Gruyter.
- Lawson, E., & Osman, O. (2025). Maternal Activism and the Politics of Memorialization in the Mothers of the Movement: A Black Feminist Reading. In A. Crosby & H. Evans (Eds.), Memorialising Violence: Transnational Feminist Reflections (pp. 160–172). Rutgers University Press.
- Lawson, E. S., Anfaara, F. W., & Osman, O. (2021). Sustainable Development Goals and the Internal Logics of “Gender Equality” in the Liberian context. In A. Williams & I. Luginaah (Eds.), Geography, Health, and Sustainability: Gender Matters Globally (1st ed.). Routledge.
Teaching and supervision
Teaching:
Undergraduate Teaching
- POL4: Comparative Politics
- POL15: The Politics of Africa
Postgraduate Teaching
- MPhil in POLIS (Lent Term 2025): Global Black Resistance