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Life
Born 5th January 1965.

Education
Prof Kamaara obtained her Bachelor of Arts Degree, in May 1989, University of Nairobi, Kenya. Later she obtained Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy in Religion, May 2003 from Moi University,    Completing a Master of Science in International Health Research Ethics in Dec 2012

Career
Eunice is a Professor of Religion at Moi University, Eldoret.

Eunice Kamaara, a professor of African Christian Ethics, is an ethicist with over-thirty-year experience in holistic development research and practice from socio-anthropological, ethical, gender, and health perspectives with distinguished strengths in interdisciplinary, gender and intersectionality studies, and in translating research findings into practical development through policy influence and community engagement. She is President and founder member of the Eldoret-based Gender and Development Network within which she directs the African Character Values Programme, a community based and community participatory organization on mentorship for adolescents, recognized by the World Health Organization among the Top 30 2019 Africa Health Innovations.

She is a co-director of the Chaplaincy Training Centre at Moi University/Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital which engages in integrating spiritual care in hospital settings, in leadership, and in teaching and learning. Eunice has consulted for national and international organizations (in Research, Teaching and Learning and in Mainstreaming Gender, Diversity and Inclusivity) including for the World Bank, UNFPA, USAID, Church World Service, PASGR, IDS- UK, and Templeton World Charity Foundation, among others. She serves in Medecins Sans Frotieres Ethics Review Board, Barcelona, Spain; the Church World Service, NYC, NY-US; the Social Science Research Council, Brooklyn, NY-US, and in the African Ethics Working Group, Oxford –UK; Theological Book Network, Grand Rapids, MI-US, among others. She has, individually and with others, over 100 publications on a broad range of multi, trans, and interdisciplinary issues. Eunice is a grandmother, mother, daughter, wife, sister, aunt and niece to many. She teaches like a mother and mothers like a teacher. She is black, female, African by nature, Presbyterian by birth and upbringing, Roman Catholic by marriage and Catholic by choice.

in International Health Research Ethics. In 2004, she founded the African Character Initiation Programme (ACIP) with 4 university colleagues. The ACIP accompanies and empowers adolescents with information through their identity and sexual crises, to build their confidence and self-esteem and provides them with life skills and character values for successful transition to responsible adulthood. The community-based and participatory programme provides a one-stop source of information on adolescent realities in a context of modernization and information explosion. For sustainability, the programme is community-sponsored and owned with an inbuilt training of young programme alumni as future trainers. Over the last 13 years, the programme has directly impacted over 2000 boys and girls through workshops and camps and directly mentored over 1500 individual boys and girls. The ACIP has been tested in a multitude of areas within Kenya, as well as Malawi and Nepal.

More information

One of SRF’s distinguished alumni, Dr. Eunice Karanja Kamaara, is Professor of Religious Studies at Moi University in Kenya. She received the SRF fellowship in 2008, when she joined the faculty of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), where she has retained the position of International Affiliate Professor. Her academic career began with a graduate assistantship at Moi University in the Department of Religious Studies in1992, and over the past twenty years she has risen through the ranks, taking her current professorship in September 2011. On March 29, 2012, she delivered her Inaugural Lecture, entitled (Re)Constructing Gender: A Holistic Strategy to Controlling HIV / AIDS in Kenya. Her long career at Moi University has been recognized with a service award and has involved teaching and training, research, and administration. The longstanding partnership between Moi University and IUPUI was reinforced by Kamaara’s opportunity to spend one year as visiting faculty there through SRF, and she continues to collaborate with her IUPUI colleagues.

Kamaara first approached SRF in 2008. Following widespread violence in response to the disputed results of the presidential election in December 2007, she and her family were targets of persecution because of their Kikuyu heritage. They were threatened directly by people who regarded them as unwelcome foreigners; part of their property was torched and burned down. With the help of another family, they went into hiding for a week before one night receiving a police escort that helped “to steal her family out”. They boarded a flight to Nairobi and remained there through the end of January. Even after peace talks offered stability and allowed Kamaara and her husband to return to Eldoret in February of 2008, they faced danger on the long journey to university every day and so were forced to stay home. Though Moi University was supportive of Kamaara and her husband, also a member of staff there, the distress of being separated from their children, whom they had placed in schools in a safer region, and the impossibility of carrying out academic work in such precarious circumstances, prompted Kamaara to seek assistance. Moi University’s partnership with IUPUI resulted in colleagues there reaching out to the SRF for support. The SRF fellowship allowed Kamaara to spend a year of respite at IUPUI’s Department of Religious Studies where she taught courses and began a book addressing the historical background of the recent violent crisis in Kenya.

Kamaara was eager to return to Moi University after the threats to her safety in her homeland had subsided, and resumed her position there in 2009. Her research accomplishments have been many and remarkable: she has carried out projects and assessments at international, national, and local levels, including research consultancies for The World Bank on youth sexual health programs and for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on gender and sexuality. She has collaborated on international research and worked with universities all over the world from Bayreuth University in Germany and the University of Birmingham to the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and Loyola University in Chicago. These projects have resulted in over 200 presentations in local and international conferences and Professor Kamaara’s publication of 50 articles in referred journals, sixteen chapters in edited works, and six authored and coauthored books.

Kamaara’s dedication to teaching and research stems from a deep intellectual curiosity, and she remains eager to learn any and all new developments in her field and beyond. Currently, she is enrolled for a Master of Science degree in International Health Research Ethics in the School of Medicine at Moi University and is working on a research project on challenges of obtaining informed consent in international HIV research in Western Kenya. She has said of the reciprocal process of learning and teaching: “As I seek to translate knowledge that I generate in research into practical development for young people, I continue to learn and unlearn a lot on holistic health of young people.”