Opening the Bodies Living Through Violence Conference/Academic Workshop, Professor of International Relations STEPHEN CHAN will give the Keynote Address – “The Imaginary of Jihad: Bodies of Thought and Bodies” on Friday, April 15 at the Benton Museum. The workshop will take place the following day in the Student Union of the University of Connecticut – Storrs Campus.
Stephen Chan was awarded an OBE for “services to Africa and higher education” in the summer of 2010, alongside receiving the 2010 Eminent Scholar in Global Development award of the International Studies Association. Currently Professor of International Relations and a member of the University of London Senate, Chan was the Foundation Dean of Law and Social Sciences at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and recently served as Dean for a second time. See http://www.stephen-chan.com/international/ for additional biographical information.
Professor Chan has published 27 books on international relations and more than 200 articles and reviews in the academic and specialist press, as well as over 100 journalistic feature articles. His books include Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence, Kaunda and Southern Africa: Image and Reality in Foreign Policy, and Citizen of Africa: Conversations with Morgan Tsvangirai. His most recent work is The End of Certainty: Towards a New Internationalism.
Chan participated in the transition to independence of Zimbabwe, the reconstruction of Uganda after the fall of Idi Amin, and also advised and trained government ministries in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Kenya. He established a consortium that trained the Eritrean Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately before and after independence in 1993. He was also part of a consortium that trained the parliamentarians and ministers of post-Dergue Ethiopia from 1998-9. From 2006-7 he was a member of the Africa-China-US Trilateral Dialogue, an effort to establish a common set of principles to help govern the emerging trade wars involving the three continents.