Discover My Research

My research has grown through encounters between monastic life, African medicinal knowledge, practical institutional work, and academic inquiry.

Over the years, my work has moved from questions about healing and medicinal plants to broader questions about how societies create knowledge, educate their members, sustain communities, and organise economic life.

I do not see these as unrelated subjects. They are different ways of asking how knowledge can serve life, how communities can develop their own capacities, and how ideas can be translated into practices that make a meaningful difference.

My research brings African experience into conversation with wider academic, scientific, economic, and spiritual traditions.

1. African Medicinal Plants and Phytomedicine

My work with Paxherbal grew from an interest in African medicinal plants and the knowledge surrounding their use. It brought me into contact with the practical challenges of documenting traditional knowledge, investigating medicinal plants, and connecting research with the needs of communities.

I am interested in the relationship between ethnomedicine, ethnobotany, pharmacological investigation, and contemporary approaches to phytomedicine.

This raises important questions. How can knowledge of medicinal plants be documented without losing its cultural context? How can traditional uses be investigated critically? How can research attend to questions of plant identification, safety, evidence, and responsible use?

I believe that respect for indigenous knowledge and rigorous investigation should work together. Neither romanticising tradition nor dismissing it outright provides an adequate foundation for serious inquiry.

My publications on herbal medicine and medicinal plants explore aspects of these questions.

Explore:

Healing Plants of Nigeria: Ethnomedicine and Therapeutic Applications

Herbal Medicine and the Revival of African Civilization.

2. African Knowledge Systems and Afrikology

Who decides what counts as knowledge? How do cultural assumptions influence the questions researchers ask? What happens when the experiences and intellectual traditions of African communities are overlooked in the production of supposedly universal ideas?

These questions inform my interest in Afrikology and in the reconstruction of knowledge and value from African perspectives.

My concern is not to isolate African knowledge from the wider world. It is to create a more balanced conversation in which African intellectual traditions can contribute on their own terms, engage other traditions critically, and participate in addressing shared human challenges.

For me, research must pay attention to context: the people, histories, relationships, and environments through which knowledge acquires meaning.

Explore:

Afrikology: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Knowledge and Value in Africa.

3. Communitalism and Community Enterprise

My experience with the practical work of institution-building led me to questions that extend beyond health. How do communities sustain themselves? Who benefits from economic activity? How might enterprise support collective wellbeing rather than treating community as a secondary consideration?

These questions inform my work on Communitalism, an approach to economic and social organisation that draws on African experience and communal principles, including insights from Benedictine life.

In Integral Community Enterprise in Africa: Communitalism as an Alternative to Capitalism, I examine the limitations of prevailing economic frameworks and explore how community, shared responsibility, and local capacities might provide a basis for alternative ways of organising economic life.

I see Communitalism as an invitation to serious discussion and practical exploration, not as a substitute for examining the particular circumstances and needs of each community.

The central question is how economic life can become more responsive to the people whose lives it affects.

4. Education, Research and the Communiversity

Universities play an important role in producing and transmitting knowledge. Yet I am interested in whether the relationship between education and society can be strengthened further.

What knowledge does a community need? How can research respond to real problems? How can practical experience, local resources, cultural understanding, technology, and academic study enrich one another?

These questions underpin my interest in the communiversity: a model of education and knowledge creation that connects the university with the community, practical experimentation, and shared learning.

Rather than treating learning as something confined to classrooms or academic publications, this approach asks how institutions can become more closely engaged with the capacities and challenges of the societies around them.

Explore:

The Idea of the Communiversity: Releasing the Natural, Cultural, Technological and Economic GENE-ius of Societies.

5. Benedictine Life, Contemplation and Intercultural Dialogue

My research is also shaped by Benedictine formation and its emphasis on community, hospitality, attentive listening, and a balanced relationship between prayer and work.

I am interested in what contemplative and communal practices can contribute to organisations and communities facing complex questions. Listening across differences, allowing space for reflection, and recognising the dignity of others can be important foundations for genuine collaboration.

In my current work as Senior Research Fellow and Special Advisor at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, I bring these interests into conversation with questions of organisational development, communal life, and intercultural collaboration.

This work allows me to explore how intellectual engagement and practical community life can support one another.

From Research to Practice

Across these areas, I return to a set of related questions:

• • • How can knowledge be rooted in the experiences and capacities of the communities it serves?
    • How can different intellectual, cultural, and spiritual traditions enter into constructive dialogue?
    • How can research inform institutions and practices in ways that strengthen communities?
    • How might education and economic life become more attentive to shared responsibility and human wellbeing?

These questions continue to develop through writing, research, collaboration, and institutional experience. I do not regard them as settled problems with simple answers. They are an invitation to further inquiry.

Join the Conversation

I welcome dialogue with researchers, universities, educators, practitioners, faith communities, and organisations interested in African knowledge systems, medicinal plants, community development, education, and alternative approaches to economic life.

I am particularly interested in conversations that connect scholarship with practical experience and create room for different perspectives.

Explore my books and publications, or contact me about a research discussion, collaborative project, lecture, or seminar.