Rita Kiki Edozie is currently the Deval Patrick Endowed Chair of Political, Economic, and Social Innovation and Professor of Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. From 2017-2023, Kiki served as the university’s interim Dean and associate dean of the John W McCormack School of Policy and Global Studies until the school was merged into the College of Liberal Arts.
African affairs and politics, global development, comparative democratization, international relations, international political economy, race and identity
PhD, Politics, The New School for Social Research, NY
MA, Politics, The New School for Social Research, NY
MA, Communication Arts, Brooklyn College, CUNY, NY
BA, English and Dramatic Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife (Nigeria)
Receiving her PhD in politics from New York City’s New School for Social Research in 1999, Kiki has been a teacher-scholar and an academic administrator of graduate education and undergraduate studies for over twenty years. Prior to UMass Boston, Kiki was a Professor of International Relations at Michigan State University’s James Madison College of Public and International Affairs and the Director of the African American and African Studies at the university’s College of Arts and Letters. She was a former Deputy Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Kiki is an accomplished scholar and author of several academic books and scholarly articles on global development, democratization, African affairs, and race and identity. Some of Kiki’s recent books, The African Union’s Africa: New Pan-African Initiatives in Global Governance (2014) and Pan-Africa Rising: The Cultural Political Economy of Nigeria’s Afri-capitalism and South Africa’s Ubuntu Business (2017). Her recent book Africa’s New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations (with Moses Khisa, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2022) received Choice Magazine’s 2022 rating as highly recommended reading. She also earned MSU’s Lilly Teaching Excellence Fellowship (2008-2009), the Academic Leadership Fellowship (2011-12), Detroit’s “Outstanding and Dedicated Service to the Community” award (2015), and she held an honorary appointment as research associate at the University of South Africa(UNISA), Pretoria.
