Olusola Ogunnubi

Olusola OGUNNUBI is a Research Fellow at the Mangosuthu University of Technology and the Centre for Gender and African Studies based at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Between 2014 and 2017 he undertook postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Zululand, South Africa. He held lectureship position at the School of Social Sciences of the University of KwaZulu-Natal from 2011 to 2014. On different occasions, he was visiting scholar both at the Political Science Department of Carleton University, Canada as well as the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies Institute for African Affairs, Hamburg, Germany. His research interests include regional power studies, comparative foreign policy, and soft power politics. He has published articles in a number of scholarly journals including Politikon, South African Journal of International Affairs, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Journal of Developing Societies, International Journal of Culture, Politics and Society, Politiea, and Insight on Africa. Dr. Ogunnubi received his PhD in Political Science from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and also has a postgraduate diploma in higher education from the same institution.

The major theme of my current work is on soft power and regional hegemony in Africa. I am interested in studying the ideational value of soft power and the foreign policy of regional powers in Africa. My study is focused on engaging the theoretical limitation of regional power conceptualisation in its application to Africa’s context on one hand, and the need to consider the analytical depth of the soft power variable in such conceptualisation. I hope to use the research visit to complete two ongoing manuscripts with the following titles: Courting Hegemonic Influence in Africa: Lessons from South Africa and Pastorpreneurs and Faith Based Organisations: Setting the Stage for Nigeria’s Religious Soft Power.