Mohammed Ali

Biography

Mohammed Seid Ali, PhD, is an academic staff member in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia, where he also heads Water Governance at the Blue Nile Institute.

Dr. Ali's academic background spans Philosophy, Law, Political Science, and Political Economy. His research interests include African philosophy, global environmental governance, public policy, political economy, and human rights. In 2021, he was a Visiting Presidential Scholar at the African Studies Centre, University of Michigan, and completed a research visit at KU Leuven, Belgium, under the Coimbra Group Scholarship Programme. He has also received two Erasmus Mundus Staff Mobility Fellowships: Sivas Cumhuriyet University, Turkey (April 2024), and the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, Netherlands (April 2025).

Dr. Ali has received several research grants and honors, including the 2019 Frontier I Best Annual Dissertation Proposal Award for sustainable industrialization, the British Council Research Award for digital and environmental peacebuilding, and the KU Leuven Research Award for decolonizing African indigenous ecology. He has also secured research funding from Bahir Dar University and international institutions for projects on sustainable value chains, environmental justice, and occupational safety and health. Currently, he serves as an Associate Editor of the Abbay Journal of Water and Environmental Science (AJWES) and is actively involved with the African Politics Conference Group of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Dr. Ali has published over 35 peer-reviewed articles and authored "The Political Economy of Apparel Exporting Industrial Parks in Ethiopia" (Springer Nature and Palgrave Macmillan). He is also a recipient of the 2025/2026 African Peacebuilding Network Individual Research Fellowship.

Project Information

Project title: Indigenous Ecology, Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and Intergenerational Environmental Justice

This Visiting Fellowship will examine how the indigenous ecological worldviews of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) can contribute to addressing the global ecological crisis and advancing intergenerational environmental justice. Focusing on the Zege Peninsula near Lake Tana, the project will investigate how religious beliefs, ecological ethics, and monastic conservation practices have sustained biodiversity and community resilience over centuries.

Through an interdisciplinary approach combining environmental humanities, religious studies, political ecology, and sustainability science, the research will generate evidence on how indigenous African ecological knowledge can enrich contemporary debates on climate change, environmental governance, and sustainable development.

The Fellowship will be undertaken under the mentorship of Professor Adriaan van Klinken, a globally recognized scholar of religion, ecology, indigenous knowledge, and African studies at the University of Leeds. His internationally respected expertise and extensive experience in interdisciplinary research will provide invaluable academic guidance in refining the project's theoretical framework, research design, data analysis, publication strategy, and knowledge dissemination. Working closely with Professor van Klinken will also create opportunities for intellectual exchange, collaborative publication, and the development of a long-term research partnership between the University of Leeds and Bahir Dar University.

The Fellowship will strengthen my research capacity in interdisciplinary and internationally collaborative scholarship while producing high-quality academic and policy outputs, including a co-authored journal article, a policy brief, a public engagement article, and knowledge-sharing workshops. Ultimately, the project aims to position indigenous African ecological knowledge as a vital resource for more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable global environmental governance.