Alvan Ikoku’s research traces confluences in science and literature that have long constituted modern medical and ethics discourse — dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present period, and particularly where Africa and its diaspora are points of representation.

His writing has thus been in three areas. First, work that details the place of world and postcolonial literatures in the evolution of global health as a medical field, with writing on malaria and Africa as a primary focus. His current book, Forms of Global Health, and articles such as, ‘Reading Malaria Literature,’ are part of this research, as is previous writing for the World Health Organization. Second, a series of long articles that detail efforts by writers of African descent to examine space, race and gender as genres of self-governance. And third, work that traces the emergence of modern fiction as an alternative mode for ethical thought regarding humane care and human subjects research. Here, Ikoku has published with Virtual Mentor as well as Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, and I am developing a second book project on the Literature of Human Experimentation.

Finally, Ikoku’s research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University Research Grants, the Marjorie Hope Nicolson Fellowship, and the Rhodes Trust.

— for an article on his work, see this Stanford Report.

— for more details, see ensuing pages on Ikoku’s research and teaching, as well as a developing vita.