Chiedo Nwankwor

Senior Fellow

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Dr. Chiedo Nwankwor is a Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Senior Fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute. She is also the Director of the SAIS Women Lead Initiative and supervises the SAIS Women Lead Practicum. Nwankwor's work focusses on gender justice, the role of identities in African politics, women's political participation and leadership, policymaking for gender justice, and economic development in Africa. She teaches courses in Contemporary African Politics, Ethnicity and Identity Politics in Africa, Gender and Politics in Africa, and Policy and Policy Making in Africa. She has published her work in the Social Politics Journal and Democracy in Africa. She also co-edited a book on the Nigerian National Assembly and has written several book chapters, including on "Transformations and Continuities: Women's Political Participation in Nigeria' in the Global Handbook of Women's Political Rights, and on "Women's Struggle for Independence" in the Oxford Handbook for Nigerian Politics.        

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Nwankwor is a fellow at the Center for Democracy and Development in Nigeria and consults for the World Bank, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Premium Times Nigeria on gender justice matters, women's political participation, and development. She has eight years of experience working in the corporate and non-governmental sectors and consulted for the New York City government on community integration for persons living with HIV/AIDS just before returning to graduate school in 2009. Nwankwor holds a B.A. in Mass Communication from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an M.Sc. in Mass Communication and Public Relations from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Delaware in 2016.