The Department of Political and International Studies has a special Visiting Professor programme called the Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor. We invite influential scholars to join us as visiting professors as part of this programme. These professors teach on our postgraduate programme, present the Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor Public Lecture and contribute in other ways to the life of the department. Please find below our current and previous Nelson Mandela Visiting Professors.

2025-2026 Professor Rita Abrahamsen

Rita Abrahamsen is a Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Ottawa, Canada. Her main interests are in African and International Politics, often focusing on the intersections of the global and the local. Her most recent book is the co-authored World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order (2024).

2023-2024 Professor Nkiru Nzegwu

Professor Nzegwu is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at State 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of New York at Binghamton in the United States of America. She has published widely in African Women's Studies and African Philosophy and Art. She is the author of Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture (2006). You can watch her Nelson Mandela Public Lecture on our YouTube channel here.

2021-2022 Professor Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui

Professor Grovogui is Professor of international relations theory and law in the Africana Studies and Research Centre at Cornell 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 in the United States of America. Professor Grovogui is interested in international relations theory, political theory and African thought. He is the author of Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law (1996) and Beyond Eurocentrism and Anarchy: Memories of International Order and Institutions (2016) as well as many articles and book chapters on statehood, sovereignty, international law and order. You can watch an interview with Professor Grovogui on our YouTube channel here.

2019 Professor Adam Ashforth

Professor Ashforth is Professor of AfroAmerican and African Studies at the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Michigan in the United States of America. He has published extensively on state formation and the political implications of spiritual insecurity in everyday life in South Africa.

2016-2017 Professor Maria Regina Soares de Lima

Professor Soares de Lima is a professor at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP) at the State 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Rio de Janeiro and Coordinator of the South American Political Observatory (OPSA).

2014-2015 Professor Lewis Gordon

Professor Gordon is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Global Affairs and Department Head in the Philosophy Department at the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Connecticut, United States of America. He is the author of several books on African philosophy, most recently Fear of Black Consciousness.

2012-2013 Professor Amitav Acharya

Professor Acharya was our inaugural Nelson Mandela Professor. He is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网, Washington, DC, United States of America. He is interested in advancing non-Western international relations theory and has published widely on the global order.