Ijeoma Nwachukwu
![[candidate photo]](picture.jpg)
S.J.D. Candidate
Graduate Teaching Fellow for Community Action for Social and Economic Rights
| Status: | In Residence |
| Email: | inwachuk@law.harvard.edu |
Dissertation
Law & Politics in Educational Reform in Nigeria
Traditional research on law-based educational reform focuses disproportionately on litigation as a strategy for institutional change. The mainly Anglo-American literature has long been inclined to concentrate on the activity of appellate courts, usually Supreme Court decisions, and treat statutory and administrative law as secondary. The research has been able to show how judicial decisions can help redefine the terms of both immediate and long-term relations among social groups. However, the literature does not sufficiently account for the limits of litigation as a strategy for educational reform. The purpose of this project is to critically examine how various legal mechanisms (litigation, regulation and legislation) enable and constrain educational governance reforms in Nigeria and similar developing country contexts. It argues for an approach to law-based educational reform that: (1) employs both litigation and extra-litigation mechanisms as tools for institutional change; (2) clarifies administrative powers and responsibilities between the various governments (national and subnational) and myriad agencies that have some role in administering primary education; and (3) considers how international human rights norms influence domestic educational governance processes.
Fields of Research and Supervisors
- International Human Rights Law (Social & Economic Rights), with Professor Lucie White, Harvard Law School, Overall Faculty Supervisor
- Administrative Law/Local Government Law, with Professor David Barron
- Comparative Education Governance, with Professor Martha Minow
Additional Research Interests
- Law & Development (Educational Reform)
- Citizenship Studies
- Human Rights
Education
- Harvard Law School, S.J.D. Candidate 2005-Present
- Harvard Law School, LL.M, 2004
- Nigerian Law School, B.L., 2000
- Abia State University, LL.B, 1998
Appointments and Fellowships
- W.E.B Du Bois Institute for African & African American Research, Research Assistant, Harvard University, 2004-5
- Awarded Landon H.Gammon Prize for Academic Excellence, 2003, Harvard Law School
- Awarded Harvard Human Rights Program Fellowship, 2003.
- Fellow, United Nation University, 2003, Tokyo, Japan.
- Fellow, 2002 ICTJ Transitional Justice Program, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
- Laureate, 2002, CODESRIA Child & Youth Studies Institute, Senegal.
Representative Publications
- Local Citizenship and the Challenge of Human Rights In Nigeria, Journal of African Law, 2005 (forthcoming).
Additional Information
- Languages: English, Hausa and Igbo