Introduction
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Dr. Obasesam Okoi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Justice and Society Studies, Founding Director of the AI and Society Innovation Lab, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of African Security journal. In addition to his training in civil engineering, he holds a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Manitoba, a Master of International Public Policy from Wilfrid Laurier University, an MA in Political Science from the University of Windsor, and a BA in International Development Studies from Trent University.
Dr. Okoi’s scholarship focuses on how at-risk populations navigate everyday survival and recovery under conditions of war, terrorism, environmental change, technological disruption, and governance failure. He examines how these overlapping adversities interact to reshape societies within lived ecologies of displacement. His interdisciplinary is organized around four interconnected themes. First, he analyzes how war, terrorism, and chronic insecurity reorganize social relations, livelihoods, and space, shaping how individuals and communities adapt over time. Second, he examines how state fragility creates openings for armed groups, criminal networks, and informal actors to assume governing roles, exercising authority over security, mobility, and natural resources beyond the formal state. Third, he explores how violence shapes displacement, movement, belonging, and access to protection. Fourth, he investigates how emerging technologies—particularly artificial intelligence—are transforming conflict dynamics, governance, and the future of peace.
Dr. Okoi’s work has been recognized with several prestigious fellowships, including the Provost Innovation Fellowship, Georg Arnhold Fellowship, Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, the Charles E. Scheidt Faculty Fellowship in Atrocity Prevention, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute Fellowship. As a Georg Arnhold Fellow at the International Rescue Committee’s Airbel Impact Lab, he collaborates with interdisciplinary teams to translate field research into evidence-based strategies that strengthen resilience among populations displaced by war and climate change across Africa, South America, Asia, and the Middle East.
Dr. Okoi is the author of Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region: Oil Insurgency and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, and co-editor of Governing Natural Resources for Sustainable Peace in Africa: Environmental Justice and Conflict Resolution. His scholarship has appeared in World Development, African Security, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Balsillie Papers, Canadian Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies, and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, as well as in edited volumes published by Oxford University Press, Manchester University Press, and Routledge.