Fellows & Grantees

Duncan Omanga

African Peacebuilding Network: Individual Research Fellowships 2014
Project Title
Healing of Postconflict Zones and 'Chieftancy' in the Social Media Space: A Media Ecology of a Twitter-Convened Baraza
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award)
Moi University

Bio

Dr. Duncan Omanga is senior program officer for the African Peacebuilding Network (APN) and Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa (Next Gen) programs. Presently, he conducts the day-to-day management of the Next Gen program. Before joining the Council in 2019, Dr. Omanga was the head of the Department of Publishing and Media Studies and a senior lecturer of media and journalism studies at Moi University, Kenya. Dr. Omanga has experience in the teaching and supervision of graduate students in Kenya (Moi University), Uganda (Uganda Police-University of Peace), and Tanzania (Saint Augustine University of Tanzania). Omanga was, until February 2019, a British Academy visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge (2018/9) and is also a 2014 APN (Africa Peacebuilding Network-SSRC) alumnus. He previously held one of the two 2015/6 African Visiting Fellowships (Centre for African Studies) at the University of Cambridge. Omanga was the nominee for the 2017 Mary Kingsley Zochonis Lecture (ASAUK), SOAS, a lecture that was based on his research on “Social Media, Political Devolution and Public Participation in Kenya.” Omanga’s research is on the intersection of digitality, security, and democracy in East Africa and his latest research grant was a Facebook-funded research project on “Human Rights, Policing, and Digital Landscapes” in Nairobi. He has published extensively in both area and disciplinary journals, presently sits on the editorial board of the Journal of East Africa Studies (JEAS) and the Journal of African Cultural Studies (JACS), and reviews articles for top journals in his discipline. Omanga is also known as a commentator of higher education in Africa and for over three years, he ran a column with East Africa’s leading daily, The Daily Nation, and later with The Standard, a Kenyan publication. Omanga is an alumnus of the Bayreuth International Graduate School.

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