Kelechi is a lecturer in archaeology and museum studies in the School of Humanities. Trained as an archaeologist, his current research and teaching focus on critical heritage studies, museum, decolonial heritage, cultural landscapes, contemporary archaeology, and indigenous knowledge systems. Since December 2011, Kelechi has researched and lectured in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Nigeria, and was already an associate professor in heritage studies before coming to Glasgow in April 2025. He was also a postdoctoral research fellow at the Global Heritage Lab, University of Bonn (2022-2025), an associate researcher at Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2023-2024), a fellow of the CAA-Getty International Program of the College Art Association in 2022-2024, and an AHP Postdoctoral Fellow of the American Council of Learned Soceities in 2020-2021.

Kelechi holds a PhD in Archaeology-Heritage Studies from the University of York, an MA and BA (both cum laude) in Archaeology and Tourism, and a Diploma in Tourism and Museum Studies from the University of Nigeria. He has conducted research in Nigeria, UK, Germany, and France, applying transdisciplinary perspectives that touches on anthropology, archaeology, heritage studies, history, environmental studies and geography.

Kelechi's research interest circulates around critical heritage studies, questioning the epistemics of coloniality in heritage and museum studies and practices and the ways it struggles with indigenous/local knowledge systems, easpecially in Africa. He started engaging this in his PhD thesis, which explored the negotiation between “global” heritage discourses and “local” belief and value systems in non-Western societies. Kelechi examined this using the case study of Otobo/Ama Obodo/Ezi/Ọfụ (the Igbo village arena or ‘square’), a cultural and historical landscape found at the center of villages across communities in eastern Nigeria. The thesis challenged the modern Western conceptualisations of heritage based on notions of pastness, decay, endangerment, loss aversion, and the divisions between past and present, culture and nature, humans and nonhumans, and materials and non-materials.

In Kelechi's subsequent resaerch projects, he has studied more-than-human ontologies. Some of his projects on this theme are: Posthumanism or Animism? The Anthropocene Problem and African Heritage Ontologies funded by the American Council of Leaerned Soceities, which examined human-tree and human-animal connectivity, and Heritage, Territory and Adaptation/Resistance to Global Threat funded through the Argelander Academy Grant to co-host four scholars from Nigeria and Colombia at the University of Bonn to engage this subject. He is currently working with the Nigerian and Colombian team on a proposal for third-party funded project to explore a south-south-north transdisciplinary and comparative study around the theme of futures of governance, people and land/territory. Kelechi is also involved in another collaborative project on Human-Nature Relationships, Extractivism and the Anthropocene sponsored with the seed funding provided by the British Academy and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The project will bring together scholars based in Europe, who originate from and/or research in the Global South (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) to meet in Berlin in September 2025 to brainstorm and work together on either a publication or research project proposal. 

In the area of heritage and museum, Kelechi's research on Dissonant Heritage and Ontological Ambivalence jointly funded by the Global Heritage Lab and Transdisciplinary Research Area: Present Pasts Grants at the University of Bonn explored the ambivalence between colonial and missionary values and Igbo cosmology, particularly in relation to the Igbo concept of nsọ ala/ani (sanction or taboo associated with the Earth goddess), twin birth and twin killing in pre-colonial eastern Nigeria. The project involved visits to museums and colonial archives in Germany, UK, France and Nigeria. Similar to the project is his ongoing reseach on decolonial heritage that engages museums and heritage institutions established by colonialism in Africa and the colonised context of African cultural collections in European museums.

In Glasgow, Kelechi will continue to engage these subjects through the multi-faceted intersections of heritage and anthropology, archaeology, history, environmental studies and geography. 

Prior publications

• British Academy and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Frontiers of Humanities Seed Funding, 2024-2025. Amount: £4,206

• Argelander Academy Grant, University of Bonn, 2024. Amount: €25,000

• Procope-Mobiliy Grant of the Department for Science and Technology, French Embassy, Berlin, 2024. Amount: €2,350

• Global Heritage Lab Research Grant, University of Bonn, 2022-2023. Amount: €14,899

• Transdisciplinary Research Area: Present Pasts (TRA 5) Research Grant, University of Bonn, 2023. Amount: €5,000

• Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Training Grant for Nigerian Scholars, 2022. Amount: ₦2,144,250

• African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), 2020-2021. Amount: $20,000

• Tweedie Exploration Fellowship Grant of the University of Edinburgh, 2016. Amount: £997

• Gilchrist Educational Trust Grant to Individuals, 2016. Amount: £750

• Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) of the University of York, 2015-2018. Amount: £57,000

I welcome potential MRes/MPhil, PhD and postdoctoral projects in any of the following areas:

• critical heritage studies

• critical museum studies 

• decolonial heritage

• cultrual landscape (including traditional ecological knowledge TEK)

• more-than-human ontologies

• heritage and posthumanism

• indigenous knowledge system

• comteporary archaeology

Decolonising the Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism (Masters) - Convenor

Introduction to Museology (Masters)

Reparations Now (Masters)

Theory and Interpretation in Archaeology (Level 4)

20 Things that Changed the World (Level 2)