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Chi Adanna Mgbako
Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Director, Leitner International Human Rights Clinic

https://twitter.com/chiadanna

Fordham University School of Law
Leitner Center
33 West 60th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10023

 		Email: mgbako@law.fordham.edu
Telephone: 212.636.7716
Fax: 212.636.6775
Office: Room 223

Chi Adanna Mgbako is clinical associate professor and founding director of the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at Fordham Law School in New York City. She and her students work on human rights campaigns, policy reports, mobile legal aid clinics, and public interest lawsuits in partnership with grassroots organizations focusing on the sexual health and rights of marginalized populations and access to justice. She has conducted human rights fieldwork and advocacy in many countries, among them Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and the United States.

Her publications appear in academic journals such as the Harvard Human Rights Journal, Yale Journal of International Affairs, Georgetown Journal of International Law, and Human Rights Quarterly and popular media including the New York Times (Global Edition), International Herald Tribune, the Guardian, Huffington Post, and allAfrica.com. She is currently working on a book project documenting the growth of the sex worker rights movement in Africa.

She began her Fordham career as Crowley Fellow in International Human Rights, completing a fact-finding project and co-producing a documentary short film on the feminization of HIV/AIDS. Prior to that, she served as Harvard Henigson Human Rights Fellow and Researcher in the West Africa office of the International Crisis Group. She is a member of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) and serves on the board of directors of Namati: Innovations in Legal Empowerment.

She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was awarded the Gary Bellow Public Service Award, the Dean's Award for Community Leadership, and the Kaufman Public Service Fellowship. She earned her B.A. in History, magna cum laude, from Columbia University, where she was a John F. Kluge Scholar.

In 2011, the National Law Journal named her to its list of "Top 40 Lawyers of Color Under 40." In 2012, she was honored as Fordham Law School's "Public Interest Professor of the Year."

Professor Mgbako's publications include:

OPINION/EDITORIAL:

BOOK REVIEWS AND CHAPTERS:
  • Book Review, Out in Africa: LGBT Organizing in Namibia and South Africa by Ashley Currier (2012), Human Rights Quarterly (forthcoming 2013)
  • Engaging Legal Dualism: Paralegal Organizations and Customary Law in Sierra Leone and Liberia in THE FUTURE OF AFRICAN CUSTOMARY LAW, Cambridge University Press, Fenrich, Galizzi, and Higgins, eds. (with Kristina Scurry Baehr) (2011)

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REPORTS:

Education

  • Harvard Law School, J.D., 2005
  • Columbia University, B.A., magna cum laude, 2001