Stanley Onyemechalu awarded 2025 Bill Gates Sr Prize

Stanley, PhD student in the Department of Archaeology, was nominated for his academic brilliance and community leadership. His interdisciplinary research on the cultural heritage of the Igbo and the enduring legacy of the Nigeria-Biafra war has made him a leader in the field of post-conflict heritage management in Africa. He has won many research grants, including one from the Royal Anthropological Institute, where he is a student fellow. He has published over 10 peer-reviewed articles, including three since becoming a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and has been invited to contribute to chapters in prestigious edited volumes.

Stanley founded the Legacies of Biafran Heritage Project in 2022 to encourage intergenerational dialogue and to educate people about a history which has been suppressed. This led to him being chosen as runner-up for the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Research Impact and Engagement in 2024 and earned him the Best Student Presentation Prize at the 2023 International Seminar on Heritage Interpretation and Presentation for Future Generations at Vrije University, Amsterdam.

Stanley said: "I am grateful to the Gates Cambridge Trust for this amazing recognition, and to my Gates Scholar peers for their nominations. I would like to acknowledge my PhD Supervisor, Dr. Dacia Viejo-Rose for her unwavering support since my arrival in Cambridge, and the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre for providing the conducive environment for ideas like mine to thrive. This recognition is dedicated to the communities in southeastern Nigeria, whose endangered post-civil war memories and narratives I am incredibly privileged to highlight through my work. A final word of thanks goes to Centre for Memories, Enugu for their invaluable partnership on the Legacies of Biafra Heritage Project."

At Gates Cambridge, Stanley was elected community officer of the Scholars Council. He was also President of the Cambridge University Nigerian Society and books review editor of the Archaeological Review for Cambridge whose November 2023 volume he co-edited. He has been a guest lecturer, supervisor and teaching assistant at the University’s Department of Archaeology and a mentor on the Cambridge Africa Mentorship programme. He has also volunteered to help new Black students in Cambridge. In addition, he co-convenes the Heritage and Colonialism Discussion Group at the University and the PhD ‘Heritage Lab’.

One of his nominators said: “I fervently believe that Stanley’s extraordinary academic accomplishments, impactful leadership and fervent commitment to enhancing the lives of others make him an exemplary candidate for the Bill Gates Sr. Prize.”

Another praised his “dedication, diligence and stellar intelligence”, saying he was simply the best scholar he had ever co-authored an article with.

Dr Dacia Viejo-Rose, Director of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre and Stanley's PhD Supervisor, said: "Stanley's research project is important on many counts: it expands the diversity of empirical data and case studies in the field of Heritage Studies; it fills a gap in the fields of Politics and War Studies by bringing cultural dimensions into the analysis of conflict and how violence in the past gets told; it contributes to furthering our understanding of violent pasts are historicized, with a particular focus on the legacies of such interactions, and finally, it incorporates not only the destructive but also the constitutive dimensions of conflict and how it generates new forms of heritage that in turn retell the past for next generations."

Stanley has recently published a paper in the International Journal of Heritage Studies: Nkali and Kolo-collecting in Eastern Nigeria: interrogating colonial collections of ọfϙ and Ikenga, Igbo objects of sovereignty and authority.