Dr Hobden was selected based on her submission titled: Citizenship, International Justice, and the View from the South. Her first residency officially starts on Wednesday (15 January)
According to information provided on the STIAS website, Iso Lomso which means ‘the eye of tomorrow’ in isiXhosa, is a programme that aims to nurture the minds of early-career African scholars. Participants are required to have obtained a Doctoral Degree within the preceding seven years and also hold an academic position at a university or research institution anywhere in Africa.
Together with other fellows, Dr Hobden will spend various periods of residency at the STIAS Wallenberg Research Centre in Stellenbosch. The fellows also receive support to attend international conferences, convene workshops, and visit sister institutes for advanced study elsewhere in the world.
Dr Hobden said the fellowship was an excellent opportunity at this stage of her career.
“It not only provides access to quiet, concentrated writing time to develop my research, but I think most significantly for me, it creates a space for a community of early-career African scholars where we can support and learn from each other and develop exciting inter-disciplinary collaborations.”
This is a well-deserved achievement for Dr Hobden, a political philosopher whose research interests include global justice, citizenship, collective responsibility, international normative thought and the brain drain crisis.
Her interest in political philosophy first emerged as a school debater engaging in the politics of the day and the surrounding normative issues. Her first degree was a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Law obtained from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. This degree introduced her to the wider world of Philosophy, and the excellent critical thinking skills it provides.
“Since then, I have been invested in learning and teaching critical thinking skills of Philosophy and applying them to difficult questions of how well we can live together in society.”
After completing her Honours and Master’s Degrees, she read for an MPhil in Political Theory at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 2014 she was a visiting student at Princeton University as part of the Oxford Princeton Global Norms Collaboration.
In September 2015 Dr Hobden completed her DPhil thesis under the supervision of Prof David Miller and Prof Cecile Fabre at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Her thesis, ‘States, Citizens & Global Injustice: The Political Channels of Responsibility’, sets out an account of the duties of states to each other, and the consequent responsibilities that citizens of liberal western democracies acquire.
Previously, Hobden was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Italy, under the mentorship of Prof Rainer Baübock.
She joined the University of Fort Hare in 2017. Her teaching interests include contemporary Political Philosophy, History of Political Thought, Philosophy of Education, and Ancient Egyptian Thought.
Source: University of Fort Hare