Jude Fokwang

Jude Fokwang, PhD is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Regis University, Denver. His research has focused on the cultures and peoples of West and Southern Africa and has researched and published on a wide variety of topics including transnational migration, citizenship, associational life, the politics of traditional leadership and democratization, development and globalization, as well as contemporary African youth identities. His diverse interests are united by the anthropological premise that human beings everywhere are meaning-makers grounded in the steady desire to order their worlds and improve their livelihoods. This assumption is true of Africa as it is of Europe, Asia or the Americas. However, global forces and agents have often interfered with these processes, prompting new creative enterprises. His research in Cameroon and South Africa specifically aim to investigate the ways in which local people come to terms with these translocal forces as well as the internal developments that have shaped their world views, politics, aspirations and imaginaries of the future.

Before coming to Regis University, Dr. Fokwang taught at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, Trent University, Lakehead University and the University of Toronto in Canada. He has also held positions as visiting lecturer at Rhodes University (2006) and the University of Stellenbosch (2009), South Africa. He obtained his BSc in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Buea, Cameroon, his MA in Anthropology from the University of Pretoria, South Africa and his PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Toronto. Dr. Fokwang is a laureate of many prestigious fellowships including the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) award on African Youth in the Global Age (2001), CODESRIA’s Comparative Research Network on Youth and Higher Education in Africa (2003), the Andrew Mellon Mentoring Fellowship, University of Cape Town (2009) and the African Humanities Program (2009) sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies.

An ethnographic filmmaker and visual ethnographer, Dr. Fokwang released his first documentary film, Something New in Old Town in 2016. The film explores a unique approach to grassroots development and communal empowerment in the western Grassfields of Cameroon. Filmed over three years in the homes, streets and work places of Old Town, the film takes us into the world of dozens of committed young men and women who strive to change their community as “searchers” of solutions to the manifold problems that beset young people and the urban environment in many African cities. Through their charitable acts, hygiene campaigns and commitment to grassroots development, they build and impart hope in a community that bears the scars of a chequered history.

Dr. Fokwang is the author of numerous academic works including Mediating Legitimacy (2009), a comparative ethnographic account of chieftaincy in post-apartheid South Africa and multi-party-era politics in Cameroon. This critically-acclaimed ethnography explores the ways in which traditional leaders in both countries reinvented themselves as legitimate political actors in contexts where their relevance was deemed obsolete or simply as custodians of culture. The book argues that in the neo-liberal era, democratically-elected political actors may suffer from deficits of legitimacy compared to traditional leadership structures that sometimes draw their political capital from the domain of culture.

Fokwang currently serves as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of AFRICA: Journal of the International African Institute, London, UK and Anthropology Southern Africa, the official journal of the Association for Anthropology in Southern Africa. He has also served as an external examiner of many doctoral dissertations for the University of Cape Town, Rhodes University, the University of Zululand and the University of Kwazulu-Natal.

During his free time, he enjoys biking with his family, playing scrabble, taking photos of landscapes and animals and enjoying the beauty and bounty of Colorado’s outdoors.