Dr. Elia Shabani Mligo is to be congratulated for having been promoted to Full Professor of Contextual Theology at his university, Teofilo Kisanji University, Mbeya, Tanzania. Dr. Mligo has an extensive record of publishing, including a number of research monographs and textbooks, such as Jesus and the Stigmatized (2011), Writing Academic Papers (2012), Doing Effective Fieldwork (2013), Elements of African Traditional Religion (2013), Symbolic Interactionism in the Gospel According to John (2014), He Descended into Hell (2015), Introduction to Research Methods and Report Writing (2016), and Rediscovering Jesus in Our Places (2020). As the titles indicate, his research and publishing focus includes contextual biblical interpretation as well as methodological reflection in relation to fieldwork challenges.
It should be mentioned that Dr. Mligo’s promotion comes only half a year after the promotion of Dr. Hoyce Jacob Lyimo Mbowe – also from Tanzania – to Full Professor of Theology at Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Kitwe, Zambia. Whereas Dr. Mligo comes from New Testament studies, Dr. Mbowe has her background in Old Testament studies. Together they demonstrate the experiences and concerns of a new generation of biblical scholars in Tanzania and East Africa, and I hope they will be able to create institutional structures that can build environments for other scholars and students in the field. Both are part of a research network mainly focusing on African biblical interpretation: CollECT: Colloquium on Epistemology, Context, and Text in Biblical Interpretation.
