My research focuses on African Philosophy, Intercultural Philosophy and Practical Philosophy from different continents. In my research I bridge Analytic and Continental approaches. My background in Philosophy and Political Science informs most of my projects. At present I work with interdisciplinary scholars in the Bantu Philosophy Project. I taught courses in Philosophy on all academic levels in Cameroon and the Netherlands and supervised BA/MA theses in the same fields. This year I teach Intercultural Philosophical Hermeneutics (BA) and Political Theory from the Global South (BA/MA).

More information about Pius Mosima

Fields of interest

Interculturality, the concept of Vital Force in African Philosophy, Indigenous African knowledge systems, African Traditional Religion, Theories of Personhood, Value Theory, African Communitarianism, Post-Independence African Political Theory

Research

I am a project researcher in the Bantu Philosophy Project, which is established at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 

This project aims to revisit the 1945 work 'Bantu Philosophy', originally written in Dutch by the Belgian missionary Placide Tempels. It will study in depth the translation issues present in the French and English translations, that are mostly used in African Philosophy curricula, and propose a new translation. It also focuses on the historical context in which the work originated and played its role. Finally the 70 years' long reception of the work on the African continent and beyond, which is often contradictory will be critically reviewed.
The project functions as a international scholarly network for exchange of research findings and sources for study regarding Bantu Philosophy. Honors students of the Faculty of Humanities of the Vrije Universiteit have also contributed to the project.

Grants and awards

•Volkswagen Foundation Grants (2007) Workshop Travel Grant  
• Gruen Berlin GmbH(2008) Workshop Travel Grant  
• Osigwe Anyam Osigwe Foundation/University of Ibadan (2011) Conference Travel Grant • Goethe Institute, Point-Sud, Lasdel (2014-2016) Research Grant on Local Courts  
• African Studies Center, Leiden (2011-2016) PhD Research Funding  
• Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (2017) Conference Travel Grant  
• Carnegie Corporation of New York (2019) Conference Travel Grant  
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2021) CLUE + Senior Research Fellowship  
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2022-2024) CLUE + Senior Research Fellowship  

Curriculum Vitae

After earning my Masters in Philosophy and Political Science at the Universities of Yaoundé I and II (Cameroon), I worked as a Lecturer at the University of Bamenda (Cameroon) while pursuing my PhD in Philosophy at Tilburg University (The Netherlands). My PhD thesis was published in bookform with ASC Leiden in 2016. At present I combine research and lecturing positions.

Selected publications

Mosima, P.M., (2016), Philosophic Sagacity and Intercultural Philosophy: Beyond Henry Odera Oruka, Tilburg: Tilburg University Press/ ASCL 

Mosima, P.M., (2022) Vital force in African-Intercultural philosophy, (Flavel, S., Robbiano, C., (Eds.) Key Concepts in World Philosophies, Bloomsbury Academic. 

Mosima, P.M., (2023) Pan Africanism as Cosmopolitanism (Uchenna Okeja Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of African Political Philosophy 

Mosima, P.M., (2023) Being-in-Community as the basis of Well-being in African Philosophy (Bolaji, B., Mahmoud, M., Muller, L., and Roothaan, A., Eds.) Rowman & Littlefield