Biography
Helidah Ogude-Chambert is a researcher, practitioner, and lecturer on migration/mobilities, race, and international development. Inspired by works from Black Studies, Black geographies, decolonial feminist thought and discourse-affect theories, her interdisciplinary research is concerned with understanding how political elites manipulate emotions and public discourse to normalise migrant precarity and justify state practices of cruelty and racialised expulsion.
Helidah is working on turning her PhD dissertation into a book manuscript entitled Strange Fish: The UK Government and Media’s Industrialization of Black Death at Sea. She also conceptualises a related exhibition called Being Affected: Emotions that Engineer Black Death.
She has over 15 years of professional experience in migration and development practice, including working across Africa and East Asia as a Social Development Specialist for the World Bank, as a Senior Policy Researcher for the Government of South Africa (The Presidency & Economic Ministry) and a Researcher at the International Crisis Group (UN Advocacy office in New York).
Helidah holds a Ph.D. in Public and Urban Policy (Migration Policy) from The New School in New York and an MS in Global Affairs (Conflict Prevention and International Development) from New York University. She was previously a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre.
She is currently a Departmental Lecturer in Migration and Development at the Oxford Department of International Development and a non-resident Senior Fellow at New York University’s Centre for Global Affairs (2023/24).
Selected publications
Ogude-Chambert, H. (2023) What our Waters Remember: On Wasted Bodies as Strange Fish. University of Oxford, Border Criminologies Blog
Ogude-Chambert, H. (2022) The UK and Migrant Men from the Global South, Africa is a Country
Ogude, H. (2020) “An Unethical, Minimal, and Cruel Welfare State: COVID-19 and the Makings of a Demoralised US Citizenry,” Global Policy Journal, Wiley-Blackwell
Ogude, H. and Chekero, T. (2020) (Im)mobility and social networks: The Impact of COVID-19 on Critical Coping Mechanisms for Urban Refugees, Development for Peace, World Bank Blogs
Ogude, H. & Sarkar, A. (2018) The Urban Dimensions of Mixed Migration and Forced Displacement in South Africa, Development for Peace Blog, The World Bank
Ogude, H. (2016) Making Europe White…Again, Africa is a Country