Elleni Zeleke

Elleni Centime Zeleke (died July 6, 2024) was an Ethiopian-born researcher

Elleni studied at York University in Toronto, Canada,

She died on July 6, 2024, after fighting breast cancer.

University research and teaching Elleni was an assistant professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University in New York, from 2018 to 2024.

Book: Ethiopia in Theory In 2019, Elleni published Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964–2016, a book presenting her view of half a century of Ethiopian interrelated intellectual and political developments. Ethiopia in Theory continues by discussing the longer term effects of the intellectual debates on the revolution during the following decades. Elleni discussed how Marxism and other ideas of the social sciences were appropriated into Ethiopian and wider African thinking.

Ethiopia in Theory criticises the development and usage of Ethiopian social sciences. Students' belief in the "scientific truth" of their political approach is seen in the book as both a strong motivator for revolutionary changes, and as a factor encouraging violence against those seen as enemies.

Harry Verhoeven describes the book as challenging ideas of "meaningful democratisation of debates around knowledge, authority and indeed liberation ... in an African context". He states that Elleni saw Ethiopian knowledge as being poorly implemented in "academic practice, government policy, civil society activism and the social needs of local communities". She argues that the social sciences should better "be understood as a space that opens up a critical and philosophical dialogue on social reality".