Dr. Robtel Neajai Pailey, who was named Liberia’s 177th Independence Day Orator, says her message is intended to inspire and incite change.
Currently, Dr. Pailey works as an Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is an award-winning academic, activist, and author.
“I’m honored to serve as National Orator this 26 July”, she said, revealing that her Oration is entitled ‘A Radical Agenda for Re-imagining Liberia’.
July 26 commemorates the day Liberia signed its Declaration of Independence in 1847, becoming the first Republic in Africa. The day is not just memorialized in Liberia; it is also observed throughout the diaspora. Every year, an Orator is announced to deliver a message and Dr. Pailey is the latest in a long line of distinguished Liberians. Her selection has been received with high levels of enthusiasm and praise.
With more than 20 years of combined personal and professional experiences in Africa, Europe, and North America, Dr. Pailey has worked across a broad range of fields supporting universities, governments, media institutions, and multilateral, regional, non-governmental, and community-based organizations.
She has practitioner-based proficiencies in qualitative research, capacity development, policy design and analysis, program management, report and grant writing, journalism, and strategic communications.
Dr. Pailey centers her scholarly research on how structural transformation is conceived and contested by local, national, and transnational actors from ‘crisis-affected’ regions of the so-called ‘Global South’.
She is author of the monograph Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa: The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia, which won both the 2022 African Politics Conference Group (APCG) Best Book Award and the 2023 African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award for Excellence in African Writing as well as contributed to the passage of Liberia’s dual citizenship law.
Her Pan-African anti-corruption children’s books Gbagba and Jaadeh! were published to critical acclaim and endorsed by Liberia’s Ministry of Education as supplemental readers for 3rd to 5th grades. Piloted in schools across Montserrado and Grand Bassa counties, Gbagba and Jaadeh! have also been adapted into radio dramas, music videos and stage plays featuring all-child casts. In 2018, Dr. Pailey was recognized with an International Anti-Corruption Excellence (ACE) Award in the category ‘academic research and education’ by the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Center (ROLACC).
She completed BA degrees in African Studies and English Literature at Howard University, an MSc in African Studies at the University of Oxford, and a doctorate in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, as a Mo Ibrahim Foundation PhD Scholar.
Visit https://www.robtelneajaipailey.com/ for more information about this year’s celebrated Orator.
