My educational background is in mass communication (HND), journalism (MA) and sociology (PhD).

My journalism career began in mid-western Nigeria in the 1980s when I worked as a staff reporter in a provincial newspaper – The Observer. Since then I have worked as a sub-editor for and contributor to newspapers in Nigeria, Germany and Ireland – please see CV. I have also been an online journalist with Ireland.com, the official website of the Irish Times. 

My most significant achievement in media management is the establishment of Metro Eireann, Ireland’s most popular multicultural newspaper, in April 2000 (http://www.metroeireann.com/about-us/). The newspaper was set up by a colleague and I. I served as the pioneering editor. Reference.com describes Metro Eireann as: “...as the primary source of news and information on Ireland's fast-growing immigrant and ethnic communities” (http://www.reference.com/browse/metro_%C3%89ireann).

In 1999 I wrote Dear Mama...An African Refugee Writes, a thinly-veiled fiction based on my observation and knowledge of Germany’s management of the increased immigration of the early 1990s. The novel was reviewed in newspapers in Nigeria, Sweden, Germany and Ireland.    

Shortform CV

Qualifications:

• PhD (Sociology) Trinity College, Dublin.
• M.A. (Journalism), Dublin City University, Dublin.
• Higher National Diploma (Mass comm), The Polytechnic, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Previous posts held:

• Lecturer: Feb. 2005 - March 2008
  Place: University of East London , London
• Broad Curriculum Teaching Fellowship: Oct. 2003 - Jan 2005
  Place: Department of Sociology, Trinity College, Dublin.
  Themes covered: Social theories
• Lecturer: Oct. 2003 - Jan. 2004
  Place: Institute of Public Administration, Dublin
  Themes Covered: Research methods
• Sociology Tutor: Oct. 2001 - May 2003
  Place: Department of Sociology, Trinity College, Dublin.
  Themes covered: Introduction to sociology, sociological imagination, classical social theory, social change, identity in the age of globalisation, world development and international aid, and consumer society
• Project Coordinator/Founding Editor, Metro Eireann, Nov. 1999 - May 2000

I have taught at all levels of BA Journalism since I joined the University of East London. One of my first goals after I joined the University was to redesign the assessment components of Introduction to Journalism, the core Level One module. The changes I implemented have enhanced attendance and a greater participation in seminars and copy clinics.

Between 2007 and 2009 I served as Programme Leader for BA Journalism. Working in conjunction with colleagues on the programme and the School leadership, I implemented modules aimed at preparing students for a changing and more challenging creative industry. For instance I designed and implemented a Level Three module titled Multimedia Newsroom Practices, which includes several skills/requirements for working in an increasingly technology-saturated media environment. I also designed and implemented Journalism Writing, a Level One module that prioritises practice and actual journalism experience. In 2005 I implemented Online Journalism, a Level Two module, with the aim to make journalism training in UEL more in tune with the demands of the industry. The modules have remained popular among the students.

I have also given guest lectures in Media Studies and supervised final year projects of taught MA students.

Postgraduate research supervision and external examining

My contribution to postgraduate research at UEL has been through direct supervision of PhD students, participation in annual review of PG students and membership of the School’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee. At present I am involved in the supervision of two PhD students.

I am also actively engaged with postgraduate research through external examining. For example, in May 2011 I served as External Examiner on a PhD oral examination in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Edinburgh. Titled ‘Negotiating Culture: Christianity and the Ogo Society in Amasiri, South-eastern Nigeria’, the dissertation examined the impact of beliefs on self-conception and the social construction difference and sameness.

I have also been appointed External Examiner in the field of Culture and Media Studies at the University of the West of England, Bristol, from 2011 to 2015. I am responsible for undergraduate and postgraduate journalism modules and dissertations.

• Production and consumption of Diaspora Media
• Media and Transnationalism
• Media and Religion
• Media and Identity
• ICTs, Web Publishing and Citizen Journalism
• Media and the Public Sphere
• Internationalisation of African Media

• Introduction to Journalism
• Online Journalism: Production and Critique
• Journalism Portfolio
• Multimedia Newsroom Practices
• Thesis Supervision
• Research Methods

My research and publishing activities cover media, journalism, migration and the sociology of religion. I have undertaken an extensive and critical research of Ireland’s new African communities, focussing on the intersections between identity and religion/media activism. My research examines the interfaces between specific Pentecostal beliefs and the interpretation of self, ‘others’ and social reality. It triangulates theories of religion and of immigrant integration and it assesses the implications of religiously-motivated self-understanding for the social location of African Pentecostals and their greater involvement in the larger Irish society. This pioneering research and my creative media practice (I started publishing Metro Eirean, Ireland’s most popular multicultural newspaper, in 2000) have been critically received by academics, policy makers and the popular media.

My multidisciplinary research has resulted in publications in respectable peer-reviewed journals. However, the most significant single output is the monograph titled Shades of belonging: African Pentecostals in Twenty-first Century Ireland, which I published in 2009. This highly-acclaimed seminal publication, which has been frequently cited by writers and researchers of immigration and immigrant communities, has been reviewed in at least three reputable academic journals, and also in newspapers and websites.

A strong indication of international recognition of the impact and importance of my research came in 2004 when I was invited to join an international research team on ‘Building Europe with New Citizens’ as a country expert for Ireland. The EU-funded project, which examined the civic activism of immigrants in 25 EU countries, resulted in several conferences and the publication of a special report by the European Commission. The chapter on Ireland was authored by me. I was also invited as a country expert on another EU-funded transnational project on ‘Diasporic Minorities and their Media in the EU’ (http://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EMTEL/minorities/reports.html) led by the London School of Economics. I also contributed the chapter on Ireland in the official report. 

Most recently my research has focussed on three main themes: 1) Identity and media consumption/choices 2) Activism among UK’s exiled journalists; and 3) Media and migration. With material support from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI), I have conducted focus groups and semi-structured interviews with African immigrants in several cities in Ireland focussing on the relationship between media choices/use and identity. My research, which also employed survey as an additional investigative technique, was part of a bigger project on ‘Broadcasting in the New Ireland: Mapping and Envisioning Cultural Diversity’ led by the National University of Ireland in Maynooth. The official report was submitted to BCI in 2010 and it included data from my empirical investigation (http://www.bai.ie/pdfs/201004_nuim-culturaldiversityrpt_gt.pdf)

My research of activism among exiled journalists in UK has been supported by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UEL - the predecessor of my present School. In 2010 the School awarded a seed grant of £2,175 towards this project. I have concluded data gathering and I am now in the process of analysis and writing.             

On media and migration, I participated in 2010 in a transnational project on ‘Irregular Migration in Times of Global Economic Crisis – perceptions and realities in Europe, Africa, Latin-America and Asia’. Funded by Germany-based Volkswagen Foundation, the project was led by the Hamburg Institute of International Economics and it investigated popular and official discourses of irregular migration in Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Finland and three non-European countries (China, Nigeria and Ecuador). The aim of our consortium was to apply for a larger international research project under the “Europe and Global Challenges” Programme, jointly sponsored by three Foundations - the Compagnia di San Paolo (Italy), the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden) and the Volkswagenstiftung (Germany). On this project I worked with researchers and academics from institutions in China, Finland, Austria, United Kingdom, Spain, Nigeria, Germany and Ecuador. The outcome includes a project meeting/conference in Hamburg and a series of Working Papers. My paper, published in 2010, is titled: Irregular migration in the United Kingdom since the turn of the millennium – development, economic background and discourses (http://irregular-migration.hwwi.de/Working_papers.6113.0.html).

My external engagements have included a consultancy project with the Africa Centre in Dublin, membership of management boards, membership of editorial boards and serving as a peer reviewer for highly-regarded academic journals.

In 2008 I served as an evaluator of a European Refugee Fund project of the Africa Centre (http://www.africacentre.ie/). Since 2006 I have served as editorial board member (and a reviewer) for Translocations, an open-access E-journal that focuses on migration and social change (http://www.imrstr.dcu.ie/index.shtml). I have also served as a reviewer for Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, which ‘publishes the results of first-class research on all forms of migration and its consequences’ (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1369-183X&linktype=1). I have also reviewed articles for Religion, another reputable journal published by Francis and Taylor Group. The journal is described as ‘an internationally recognized peer-reviewed journal, publishing original scholarly research in the comparative and interdisciplinary study of religion’ (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622940/description#description). I am a member of the Centre for Research on Migration and Belonging (CRMB) based in the School of Law and Social Sciences http://www.uel.ac.uk/cmrb/members.htm). I was a member of the organising committee of the very successful ‘Religion and Racism’ conference held by the Centre in UEL in the Spring of 2010. I am an executive member of the African Association for the Study of Religion (http://www.a-asr.org/), and a member of the International Association for the History of Religions (http://www.iahr.dk/). I am also a member of the Association for Journalism Education (AJE) in the UK. I have also served as a board member and chairperson of the Exiled Journalists’ Network in the United Kingdom.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Monograph

Ugba, Abel (2009) Shades of Belonging: African Pentecostals in Twenty-First Century Ireland. Tenton New Jersey and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press.

Articles in refereed journals 

Ugba, Abel (2011) A review of ‘Media and technology in Emerging African democracies’, published in Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies, 32:3, 80-82

Ugba, Abel (2011) A review of ‘Immigration and Social Cohesion in the Republic of Ireland’, published in Translocations, Vol. 7, Issue 1(http://www.translocations.ie/current_issue.html)

Ugba, Abel (2010) Technological determinism, UGC and the future of journalism, published in Proof: Reading Journalism and Society, Set 1

Ugba, Abel (2009) A Part of and Apart from Society? Pentecostal Africans in the ‘New Ireland’. Translocations: Migration and Social Change, Volume 4, Issue 1 (www.translocations.ie/volume_4_issue_1/index.html)

Ugba, Abel (2006) Between God and Ethnicity: Pentecostal African Immigrants in 21st Century Ireland. Irish Journal of Anthropology; Vol. 9 (3), pp. 56 – 63

Ugba, Abel (2006) African Pentecostals in 21^st Century Ireland. Studies, Volume 95, No. 378 pp. 163-173 

Chapters in books

Ugba, Abel (2012-forthcoming) Researching African Immigrant Religions: Boundaries, belonging and access, in Adogame et al (eds.) African Traditions in the Study of Religion: Essays in honour of Jacob Kehinde Olupona. Hampshire: Ashgate 

Ugba, Abel (2011)When ‘Home’ is nowhere: Re-assessing African Diasporic Experience in 21^st Century Ireland, in Ó Duibhir, et al (eds.) All Changed? Culture and identity in contemporary Ireland. Dublin: Duras Book

Ugba, Abel. (2011) African-led Pentecostalism in 21^st Century Ireland: A historical and substantive analysis, in Lugwig (ed.) The African Christian Presence in the West. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press

Ugba, Abel (2009) Beliefs, Boundaries and Belongingin Gargi Bhattacharyya (ed.) Ethnicities and Values in a Changing World. Farnham, England; Burlinghton, USA: Ashgate

Ugba, Abel (2007) Ireland,in Triandafyllidou and Gropas (eds.) European Immigration: A Sourcebook. Farnham, England; Burlinghton, USA: Ashgate

Ugba, Abel (2007) African Pentecostals in twenty-first century Ireland: Identity and integrationin Fanning (ed.) Immigration and Social Change in Ireland. Manchester: Manchester University Press

Reports, working paper and other publications

Ugba, Abel (2010) Irregular migration in the United Kingdom since the turn of the millennium – developments, economic background and discourses; a working paper (http://irregular-migration.hwwi.de/typo3_upload/groups/31/4.Background_Information/4.7.Working_Papers/WP9_2010_Ugba__IrregularMigration_UnitedKingdom_Oct10.pdf)

Ugba, Abel (2005)Active Civic Participation of Immigrants in Ireland; a contribution to the final report of the EU-sponsored project on ‘Building Europe with new citizens? An inquiry into the civic participation of naturalized citizens and foreign residents in 25 counties. Brussels: European Commission

Ugba, Abel (2004)A quantitative profile analysis of African immigrants in 21st Century Dublinwww.tcd.ie/Sociology/mphil/presentation-2.pdf

Ugba, Abel (2003a) From There to Here: An African view of Ireland and the Irish. Asyland,  Magazine of the Irish Refugee Council: Spring 2003

Ugba, Abel (2003b) African Churches in Ireland. Asyland, Magazine of the Irish Refugee Council: Autumn 2003; 10-11 

Ugba, Abel (2002) Mapping Minorities and their Media: The National Context Ireland; Contribution to an EU project on "Diasporic Minorities and their Media in the EU" project. www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/Media/EMTEL/Minorities/reports.html 

Selected Conference papers

Ugba, Abel. 2011. Representation and Self-representation of African-led churches in the UK, presented at a conference on ‘New African Regions in the West’, organised by INFORM and the Department of Sociology of the London School of Economics, London, on May 14. 

Ugba, Abel. 2010. Representation of the Niger Delta conflict and peace process in the British media:  Case study of The Guardian, the Independent and Mail, presented at ‘Communicating Peace’ conference organised by the International Peace Research Association, in Sydney, Australia, July 10.

Ugba, Abel. 2010. A Part of and Apart from Society? Pentecostal Africans in the ‘New Ireland’, presentation to staff and postgraduate students of the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, on February 23.

Ugba, Abel. 2010. Pentecostalism, Identity and Boundaries, presented via Skype to a conference on ‘Pentecostal Identities: African Migrant Churches and Communities in Ireland’, the Study of Religions Department, UCC and Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st Century; in Cork, Ireland, on May 4.

Ugba, Abel. 2010. Migration, Racism and Religion: A case study of African-led Pentecostal groups in Europe, presentation at a conference on Migration, Racism and Religion, organised by the Centre for Research on Migration and Belonging, University of East London, on February 4.

Ugba, Abel. 2009. Shades of Belonging: African Pentecostals in 21^st Century Ireland; a public lecture delivered at the University of East London, London, in February.

Ugba, Abel. 2009. They came, they saw and they struggled: Challenges of higher education for refugee journalists in the United Kingdom, a presentation at the Launch of the University of the West of England’s Refugee and Migrant Support Hub, in Bristol, in December.

Ugba, Abel. 2008. When Home is Nowhere; a contribution to the Seamus Heaney Lecture series, held at St. Patrick College, Drumcumdra, Dublin, Ireland, on December 1.

Ugba, Abel. 2007. Now that the mangrove tree has taken its place in the river, what next?, a keynote address presented at a conference on ‘Africans in 21^st Century Ireland: A multidisciplinary analysis’, held in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, on January 13.

Ugba, Abel. 2007. African Pentecostals in 21st Century Ireland: Beliefs, Boundaries and Belonging; presented at a conference on ‘Race and Immigration in the New Ireland’, held in the University of Notre Dame, USA, in October.  

Ugba, Abel. 2007. Immigrant Civic Activists in Ireland; presented at a conference on ‘Immigrant Civic participation in 25 EU Countries’, held in the European Parliament Building, Brussels, Belgium,  in April.

Ugba, Abel. 2007. Ireland: A Crash Course in Immigrant Integration; presented at a conference on ‘Immigrant Participation in Public Life: European and Greek Experiences’, organised by the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy, in Athens, Greece, in May

Ugba, Abel. 2005. Not Double but Multiple Vision: Deconstructing the Gaze of Ireland’s African Pentecostals; presented at the ‘Double Vision’ conference, held in University College Dublin, Ireland, in March.

Ugba, Abel. 2004. Between God, Ethnicity and Politics: African-led Pentecostal groups in 21st Century Ireland; presented at a seminar on ‘Contemporary Irish Identities’, organised by the Identity, Diversity, and Citizenship Research Programme in the Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC), UCD, Dublin. 

Ugba, Abel. 2004. Contested Identity: The case of African-led Pentecostal churches in Ireland; presented at the 31st Annual Conference of the Sociological Association of Ireland, held at the Hodson Bay Hotel, Athlone, Ireland, in April.

Ugba, Abel. 2003. Africans in 21st Century Dublin: An Emerging Community; presented at ‘Re-imagining Ireland’ conference, held in Charlottesville, USA, in May.