Biography
Toju Ogbe is a PhD student in the African Leadership Centre. His research draws from multiple disciplines, spanning leadership, culture and linguistic studies, to explore the role of cultural nuances in the way society interprets and responds to rhetorical expressions of leadership during crises.
In addition to his PhD research at King's, Toju works as a communications professional with an extensive breadth of experience in corporate communications, advocacy, stakeholder engagement and crisis communications.
His professional career spans two decades across Africa, Middle East and the UK. His academic background includes a bachelor’s degree in Economics, an MBA and a master's degree in Marketing Communications.
Research
Thesis title: 'Rhetorical leadership in crisis: Culturally contingent or universally applicable?'
This thesis explores the role of cultural nuances in the way society interprets and responds to rhetorical leadership within the context of terror crises. Specifically, it relies on a comparative case study of two cultural frameworks to investigate if practices of rhetorical leadership are culturally contingent or universally applicable.
Two dimensions of culture form the basis upon which rhetorical leadership is investigated; they include power distance and individualism/collectivism indices. The research method employs a triangulation of secondary data (using corpus linguistic software to analyse speeches) and semi-structured interviews.
PhD supervision
- Principal supervisor: 'Funmi Olonisakin
- Secondary supervisor: Abiodun Alao