Catherine Alum Odora Hoppers

University of Calgary

Biographical Abstracts

Catherine Alum Odora Hoppers is a scholar and policy specialist on international development, education, North-South questions, disarmament, peace, and human security. Professor Hoppers has shared her expertise with UNESCO, the United Nations Department of Disarmament Affairs, the World Economic Forum, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

In 2013, Professor Hoppers was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honour by the president of Uganda for her groundbreaking academic research and leadership. In 2014, she received the South African National Pioneers Award for her contribution to the development of Indigenous knowledge systems in South. In 2015, she received the Nelson Mandela Distinguished Africanist Award for her pursuit of the total liberation of the African continent through the promotion of Indigenous knowledge systems of education. In the same year she was named “Woman of the Year” by the University of South Africa.

She has addressed the International Bar Association (the global voice of the legal profession), the Swedish Research Council, and Academy of Science of South Africa, the British House of Lords (British Parliament), and the Royal Dutch Shell.

In 2017, Hoppers received the distinction from UNESCO as an Honorary Fellow in Lifelong Learning. She has also served as a Goodwill Ambassador for Makerere University in Kampala and an Ambassador for Non-Violence at the Durban University International Centre for Non-Violence. She was formerly a member of the International Faculty of the United Nations International Leadership Academy (Amman-Jordan).

She is the founder and director of the Global Institute for Applied Governance in Science, Knowledge Systems, and Innovations and holds a professorship in education at Gulu University in Uganda.

In 2021, she served as a member of the faculty for the Indigenous Science and Peace program at the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica, a visiting fellow at Cornell University in the U.S., and a member of the Board of Governors at Glenbow Museum in Alberta, Canada.

She is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and was a member of the Academy of Science Special Panel on the Future of Humanities (South Africa). She is a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and past chair (2014) of the African Academy of Science Membership Advisory Committee on the Social and Cultural Sciences.

In 2023, she was elected and appointed as Patron for Life of the Inter-University Symposium on Pan Africanism by the Guild presidents of the 23 universities in Uganda. In 2024, she was named Research Chair in Pluralistic Societies at the University of Calgary.

She received her master’s and doctorate degrees in international education from Stockholm University and holds honorary doctorates from Orebro University in Sweden and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa.

Areas of Expertise

• Indigenous knowledge systems
• Cognition justice
• Transformation of higher education