STUDENTS | Odinaka Eze

Odinaka Eze graduated top of his class from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 2018. He also served as the President of the Faculty of Arts Student Association, 2017-2018 session, where he was actively involved in students’ politics and advocacy. In 2018, he was part of the second cohort that represented the University of Nigeria at the annual Commonwealth Universities summer school, held in Hong Kong. Before HASTS, he obtained his Master of Arts from the University of Mississippi, Oxford, Summa Cum laude in 2023. His master’s thesis explored leprosy disease and public health in colonial Nigeria, precisely tracing local responses to leprosy eradication campaigns in the second quarter of the twentieth century.

At HASTS, his research interests cut across the human and material mobilities of health from, in, and out of Africa. He seeks to understand how health, not disease, flows in and out of Africa. So much has been written on how diseases originate and travel from Africa; however, Africa had and continues to export health, both in theory and practice, to other continents. His research examines the underlying implications of aid influx from the Global North into Africa. Are medical aids and relief materials genuinely motivated by humanitarianism? Why are multinational corporations establishing NGOs detached from their business engagements? Similarly, Odinaka seeks to understand climate justice from an African perspective. How do multinational corporations aggravate environmental despoliation that mobilizes the spatial circulation of toxic particles? What types of illnesses and diseases emanate from the activities of these corporations in developing (under-developed) African countries? Equally, his research also situates the mobility of health workers from Africa to North America at the intersection of these transnational migratory narratives. What factors enable and inhibit these mobilities? How have African health workers in North America improved the health of their communities? These questions are pertinent as the world continues to expand its bandwidth in global disease control and health securitization.