Dr Olalekan Bello

I am an expert in Energy Investment, Arbitration, Environmental and Climate Change Law. My interest in this field originates from my PhD on Energy Investment and Environmental law and theory (University of Westminster in 2021). My knowledge in Energy and Climate Justice developed by applying theory from Luhmann’s systems theory, Foucault’s biopolitics, and Deleuze’s Affect and Husserl/Heidegger’s phenomenology. I have been a member of the editorial board for Journal of Energy and Natural Resources since 2022.

Prior to joining Leicester Law School in July 2022 I was a Lecturer/Researcher at the University of Westminster, London. I read my degree at Birkbeck, University of London, LLM at the University of Aberdeen, and gained my PhD at the University of Westminster.

My research focuses on Energy, Climate Change and Sustainability, finding justice for energy frontiers. I apply theory from Luhmann’s systems theory and constructivist epistemology to achieve ecological communication; Foucault’s biopolitics to realise eco-governmentality in regulating environmental policies; and Deleuze’s Affect and Husserl/Heidegger’s phenomenology to historicise oil communities' lived experiences to achieve biodiversity.

• Olalekan A. Bello (2024) ‘Human Rights and Environmental Justice as Transcendental and Psychosocial in Human Systems: The Luhmann Effect in Nigeria’s Niger Delta Oil Complex?’ In Jean Claude Ashukem & Semie M. Sama (Eds.)Domestic and Regional Environmental Law and Policies in Africa: A Research Companion, Routledge, 301-322 (forthcoming)
• Stefaan Smis & Olalekan Bello (2021) ‘Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) and the Centre for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) v Nigeria: Two Decades on – Questioning the Continued Implementation Gap’ 5 African Human Rights Yearbook, 454-474, DOI: 10.29053/2523-1367/2021/v5a21
• Olalekan Bello (2021) ‘Spectacularising’ Nigeria’s Niger Delta Condition as Necropolitics: Revisiting KenSaro Wiwa’s Genocide in Nigeria: the Ogoni Tragedy’, Academia Letters, Article 3548, DOI: 10.20935/AL3548
• Olalekan A. Bello (2021) ‘Jettisoning Limited Liability: Okpabi, and Four Nigerian Farmers v Royal Dutch Shell Plc as the Reckoning for Oil Multinationals’ Environmental Harm in Frontier Oil Provinces?’ Academia Letters, Article 3119, DOI: 10.20935/AL3119

Areas of Research I am interested in supervising:

• Energy, Oil and Gas Investment Law
• Environmental Climate Change and Sustainability law
• Environmental Rights and Justice in Energy Frontiers
• Environmental Storytelling and Narrative inquiry
• Legal Theory and jurisprudence (Modern and Postmodern)
• Law and literature (African pre-, and postcolonial literature)
• Postcolonial and Decolonisation theory Legal Cultures, Traditions, and History (from the global perspective)
• International Human Rights Law and Theory, especially Environmental Rights and Justice regarding Transboundary Movement of Waste.
• Third World Approaches to International law (- TWAIL)

Undergraduate

• Environmental, Climate Change and Sustainability Law
• Equity and Trusts