Ubuntu: How an Ancient African Concept Can Help Humans Flourish

Tuesday, October 28, 2025
10:00AM - 12:00PM

Online: Free on Zoom. Registration Required.

We all increasingly struggle with multilayered modern wounds — loneliness, alienation, depression, anxiety, and more. How can we address these concerns? Gonzaga professor Itohan M. Idumwonyi invites us to explore Ubuntu. Ubuntu emphasizes community building, a way to reapproach our relationships so we can break the artificial borders that separate us and look out for one another. Directing one’s own humanity to others helps us navigate beyond superficial solutions to rethink, adapt, and foster human interconnectedness.

Why should we care about Ubuntu? This value of neighborliness enables healing and human flourishing for the good of all. Idumwonyi uses a work-along session to connect and inspire people to draw from Ubuntu as a call to action to bring about a more humane world.

Itohan M. Idumwonyi (she/her) is assistant professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University. She earned her PhD in religious studies from Rice University, Houston. AAUW awarded her an International Fellowship in 2014.  Dr. Idumwonyi has authored several works, including the most recent, Crashed Realities?: Gender Dynamics in Nigerian Pentecostalism. The pillars of her interdisciplinary scholarship intersect with African religions, African diaspora religions, African studies, sociology of religion, African womanist theology, religion, and gender. She is a Smithsonian Global Religions of Africa Speaker. Idumwonyi lives in Spokane.