Gloria Chuku, chair and professor of Africana studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, received the 2017 Ali Mazrui Award for Scholarship and Research Excellence from the Toyin Falola Annual Conference on African Diaspora. She is the first woman to receive the award. It was presented to her at the Adeyemi College of Education in Ondo, Nigeria.
The award honors the legacy of Kenyan-born professor Ali Mazrui, known for his research on African history and critical analysis of western influence in Africa. It acknowledges scholars whose academic work is substantial, rigorous, and original, and has a far-reaching impact on one or more disciplines within Africana studies.
Professor Chuku is the author of Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria 1900-1960 (Routledge, 2005). She is the editor of The Igbo Intellectual Tradition: Creative Conflict in African and African Diasporic Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Ethnicities, Nationalities, and Cross-Cultural Representations in Africa and the Diaspora (Carolina Academic Press, 2015).
Dr. Chuku joined the faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2008. Earlier, she taught at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, South Carolina State University, and Morgan State University in Baltimore. She holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Nigeria (Nsukka).
