Christopher Wadibia

Junior Research Fellow, Pembroke College, University of Oxford
Christopher Wadibia is researching the nexus between political Pentecostalism and racism in the UK under the aegis of Pembroke’s Religion and the Frontier Challenges program. Wadibia’s doctoral research studied the politics underpinning how the Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of Nigeria’s most popular and influential indigenous Pentecostal churches, invests in Nigerian development causes. Before Oxford, Christopher completed a BA in government at Georgetown University (2016), an MPhil in intercultural theology and interreligious studies at Trinity College Dublin (2018), and a PhD in theology and religious studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge (2021). He was awarded a Fulbright grant to research Muslim-Christian relations in Nigeria (2016-2017) by the US Department of State and the James Haire Prize for best coursework by Trinity College Dublin. As a doctoral researcher at Cambridge, he was appointed as an Ax:son Johnson research assistant in applied history by the Cambridge University Centre for Geopolitics and as an honorary PhD scholar by the Cambridge University Woolf Institute. Alongside his junior research fellowship, Wadibia is assistant editor of the academic journal PentecoStudies and is an affiliated researcher at the Cambridge University Woolf Institute. His research interests include global Pentecostalism; religion, politics, and development; religion, society, and public policy; and Muslim-Christian relations.