Professor Nii-K Plange is an international social scientist with over forty years of academic research, teaching, consulting, and managerial experience. He is currently Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Research at Fiji National University and Dean of the Centre for Graduate Studies. He also coordinates the University’s Graduate Programme in Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation. His primary interest is in the development challenges of the Global South and the search for viable solutions, especially now, in the face of the existential threat of climate change. For this, he has and continues to undertake consultancy with both regional and international organisations and leads a team at the University in seeking consulting projects. He taught at several Canadian universities prior to his academia and work in the regional Pacific.
His academic areas of expertise and publications in different journals and books include social theory, political economy, and research methods. He holds a PhD in Political Sociology and Development from the University of Toronto. His technical and managerial work included, in the 1990s, with the Social and Behavioral Research Unit and the Programme on Substance Abuse, of the World Health Organization, in Geneva, and later with UNAIDS. He established and managed the first UNAIDS office in Papua New Guinea, as Country Director, and later moved to Geneva, as a Senior Programme Adviser, with the AID Effectiveness Unit. His responsibilities included Africa and the Asia/Pacific region and engagement /collaboration with the World Bank, the European Union and other international institutions in monitoring HIV Prevention and Treatment Programmes. This was followed by work with AusAID (now DFAT) as HIV Policy Adviser with the Papua New Guinea HIV Prevention programme, at which he worked closely with the PNG government and extensively with non-governmental organizations in designing and implementing HIV Treatment and Prevention strategies. He joined the Fiji National University in 2016. Recently, he was a founding member and, until recently, chair of the Commonwealth Climate Resilience Network (CCRN) and has been actively engaged with the Association of Commonwealth Universities in the design and implementation of the King’s Commonwealth Fellowship.
