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Ogechukwu Williams, PhD

Assistant Professor

Director of African Studies

Contact

College of Arts and Sciences
History
African Studies
DHHC - Dowling Hall/Humanities Center

Ogechukwu Williams, PhD

Assistant Professor

Director of African Studies

Ogechukwu Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History (CCAS) and Department of Medical Humanities (School of Medicine), and Director of African Studies at Creighton University. Her current research focuses on maternal and reproductive health histories. Her first monograph, Birth Politics: Colonial Power, Medical Pluralism, and Maternity in Nigeria, frames childbirth as a political, religious, and cultural battleground for individual and social control, and demonstrates how western and African actors, such as Aladura faith healers, traditional midwives, and various agents of biomedicine, inserted themselves in and navigated colonial and post-colonial era politics of reproduction. It will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Her second book project, Dying to Bring Life: A Social History of Maternal Deaths in Nigeria, uses annual medical reports, oral history accounts of parents and health workers, newspaper publications, newsletters, legal proceedings, and documents on Nigeria Medical Service to examine maternal deaths and questions of access, patients’ rights, and reproductive justice. Her publications have appeared in several peer reviewed outlets, including, Social History of Medicine, Journal of African History, Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, Africa, and Women’s Studies. Her teaching and research interests include the history of medicine in Africa and the African diaspora, early and modern Africa, women's history, indigenous health systems, medicine and social justice, and wartime medicine. She co-edited "Writing the Nigeria-Biafra War."

Research Focus

Maternal and Reproductive Health; Midwifery and Childbirth; Medical Activism; Medicine in Africa and the African Diaspora; Indigenous Medical Systems; Wartime Medicine; Women's History

Department

History

Position

Assistant Professor

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