SOAS Inaugural Lecture: Professors Awino Okech & Dan Plesch

Join us to celebrate a special milestone for our new professors and hear about their innovative research. Doors for this event will open on 5:45 PM with the lectures to commence at 6:00 PM. A post drinks reception will be held at 7:15 PM immediately after the lecture.

Professor Awino Okech, Professor of Feminist & Security Studies

Lecture title: Feminist worldmaking: on knowledge infrastructures and social transformation

Lecture abstract: This lecture offers a historical overview of the socio-economic and political moments that shaped critical interventions by feminist intellectuals and movements across sections of Africa. In doing so, it foregrounds the role of feminist scholarship in nation and state-making discourses and its centrality in building just and equitable futures. The lecture draws on Professor Okech's work over the last 20 years in community organising, regional development programming, continental policy interventions, and academic research.

Professor Dan Plesch, Professor of Diplomacy and Strategy

Lecture title: Weapons Controls and Human Rights: Thinking globally acting globally

Lecture abstract: This lecture engages with a range of international, historical and legal research, from 1980s investigations of secret NATO nuclear weapons reported by the Washington Post, to arguing the legal liability of heads of state for international crimes before the supreme court of France today. The lecture proposes using Second World War-era antifascist security politics based on human rights and weapons controls against current reactionary threats.