Role: Professor, University of Benin City
Benin City, Nigeria

  Contact: nkolian@uniben.edu

  Research Interests:
Health Law | Gender | Legal Research | International Human Rights | Post-Colonial Feminist Theory

Nkolika Ijeoma Aniekwu is Professor of Health Law and Head, Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law, University of Benin, Nigeria. She currently teaches Legal Method and Reproductive Health Law and has published journal articles, conference papers and text books on health law, gender, legal research methodologies, international human rights and post-colonial feminist theories. In 2010, Professor Aniekwu designed the LL.M Course in Reproductive Health and Rights Law at the faculty of Law, University of Benin. This course is the first of its kind in Nigerian Universities. In 2012, she received the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) Doctoral Theses (NUDTAS) Award for the best Doctoral theses in Law within the Nigerian Universities System. Her research profile focuses primarily on gender issues, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health law, with emphasis on the linkages of regional municipalities with universal institutions and the ways national legal systems negotiate AIDS, sexuality and human rights protection in different cultural, political and social environments.

Professor Nkolika Aniekwu is visiting professor and fellow to a growing number of universities and affiliated institutions in Europe, South Africa, UK and, more recently, the United States. She is associate and member of several professional bodies, and has guest lectured and presented research papers and works-in-progress at regional and international academic events on law, gender, human reproduction and HIV/AIDS. In 2015, she was the Nigerian Consultant in a collaborative United States AIDS project on 'Age of Consent for HIV in Nigerian Laws' with the University of Washington, PEPFAR (U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and CDC (U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention). The project findings have since been presented to the Nigerian government. Subsequently, she was invited to the Center for Law, Science and Global Health, School of Law, University of Washington, Seattle as visiting scholar on Nigerian health laws and systems.

Her recent research interest centres around AIDS, Law and gender, with particular focus on the connections between societal perceptions, expectations and definitions of masculinities, and the feminization of HIV/AIDS in sub Saharan Africa, using Nigeria as a typical case study. ‘Feminization’ in this context implies the feminist realities of HIV as a lived experience amongst indigenous women in the specified area(s). Her research project tracks the trajectories of AIDS in the region, and makes a comparative analysis of AIDS laws in the Global North and South.