Justice Richard Kwabena Owusu Kyei

Justice Richard Kwabena Owusu Kyei holds a PhD in Sociology from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Work in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi-Ghana. He is an adjunct fellow in the Centre for Cultural and African Studies, KNUST. Justice has an MA degree in Migration and Social Transformation from Ca Foscari University in Venice, Italy and an MA degree in Economic Sociology from Lancaster University, UK. His first degree was in Theology from the Holy Cross Pontifical University, Rome, Italy. He worked as an interpreter with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Gorizia, Italy.

In 2019, Justice was awarded an individual research grant from the African Peacebuilding Network, Social Science Research Council (Brooklyn, USA) to carry out the project, Institutionalization of Political Vigilantism in Ghana’s Democratic Governance: Conflict, Violence and Peacebuilding. In the same year, he was also awarded an individual research grant from the Swiss Sub-Saharan African Migration Network to carry out the project, Prospective and Returned Ghanaian Migrant Students in the Euro-Afro Migration Experience.
 
Justice is the principal investigator in the 2019 KNUST Research Fund on Suicide and Suicide Ideation among KNUST students. His research interests are: political sociology, migration, gender, religion, second generation migrants and democratic governance.

During this three months fellowship at the African Studies Centre Leiden, he is dedicated to converting his fieldwork data on political vigilantism into publishable articles and to give a seminar on this topic. In addition he will engage with senior researchers to explore other research possibilities in shaping and building his academic career.