Maiyo, Joshua K, PhD.

Josh Maiyo is a lecturer in Political Ecology, Environment, and Development at the department of International Relations, School of Humanities and Social Sciences at USIU-Africa. His research and scholarly interests lie in the intersection between the socio-politics of environment and natural resource governance, agrarian change, and rural development. Other research areas include the political ecology of Chinese engagement in Africa. Before joining USIU-A in 2019, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Radboud University, Nijmegen in the Netherlands where his research examined the dynamics of land administration and local government legitimacy in Northern Uganda. Prior to that, he was a research fellow in the China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC, where he conducted research on the political ecology of Chinese agriculture and infrastructure investments in East Africa (Uganda and Kenya). Dr. Maiyo has extensive teaching experience in the Netherlands, having served as a senior lecturer in international relations at the Leiden campus of Webster University, in the Netherlands; the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam where he taught environment, globalization and development; and the University of Amsterdam (UvA) where he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in international Development, and Human Geography. He has also been a visiting lecturer at the Centre for African Studies (JEFCAS), Bradford University (UK); the Centre for African Studies (ZASB), University of Basel; African Studies Centre (ASC) Leiden University, and the Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS). Dr. Maiyo obtained his PhD in Social Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam (2018) on the topic of foreign large-scale land acquisitions, agrarian change, and rural development in Uganda. Dr. Maiyo also holds post-graduate degrees in Political Science and International Relations (MSc) from the University of Amsterdam (cum laude), and a MPhil in African Studies from Leiden University. In his spare time, Josh Maiyo enjoys long-distance running and practicing small-scale agroecology in Kenya’s western Rift-Valley.