Our Featured Fellow for December 2024 is Amidu Kalokoh. Amidu is a fourth-year Public Policy and Administration doctoral candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). He earned his bachelor’s with honors in Peace and Conflict Studies and Master of Science in Security Strategic and Development Studies from the University of Sierra Leone, and a Master of International Studies from North Carolina State University.

Amidu’s dissertation aims to advance public policy and administration, intersecting homeland security, emergency management, and criminal justice. It examines natural hazard preparedness for correctional facilities to ensure the safety and welfare of correctional officers, inmates, and the public in the Commonwealth of Virginia. His multidisciplinary research focuses on homeland security, emergency management, and criminal justice, with topics ranging from emergency preparedness and recovery among vulnerable populations; transnational organizational organized crime; law enforcement; and punitive and transitional justice. Amidu’s work supports community resilience, public safety, institutional effectiveness and efficiency, social equity, justice, and democratic good governance. This research agenda is motivated by Amidu’s experiences from the civil war in Sierra Leone and his services with the Office of the President of Sierra Leone, where he analyzed, responded to, and coordinated security and development initiatives.

Amidu joined the Bill Anderson Fund in 2022 and has served on various committees, including the Lightning Talks Committee, Writing Committee, and Programming Committee, where he served as chair apprentice and moderator during the 2023-2024 academic year. 

In 2024, Amidu participated in the Coastal Hazards, Equity, Economic Prosperity, and Resilience (CHEER) summer scholars’ program hosted by East Carolina University. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the CHEER initiative involves researchers from 11 universities and several disciplines, and is coordinated by the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. During his time with the program, Amidu led a team that examined coastal hazard vulnerabilities, preparedness, and recovery pathways for mobile and manufactured homes in eastern North Carolina.

Amidu is currently the Vice President of the Black Graduate Student Association and Founder and President of the Student Research Initiative at VCU. He is also a founding member of the Franziska Agriculture Farmers’ Association and Sierra Leone Unites. These nonprofit organizations in Sierra Leone support food security, education, youth and women’s empowerment, human rights, and civic engagement. His published research appears in Risk, Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy, Journal of International Development, and Journal of Money Laundering Control. 

Amidu holds membership with the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), Public Administration Theory Network, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Virginia Emergency Management Association, and Money Laundering Research Network. He has received several awards and fellowships, such as the Black History in the Making award (VCU), Development Advocate of the Year award (Bai Burreh Heritage Foundation), 2024 Outstanding Public Policy and Administration doctoral student (VCU), ASPA Founders’ Fellow, Public Administration Network Fellow, and Association for Public Policy and Management’s Equity and Inclusion Fellow.