Hilda Tizeba

Hilda Tizeba is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Health, Medical Law and Ethics, Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh, concurrently serving as a Tutor in Criminal Law for undergraduate students and Online Support Tutor for postgraduate research. Formerly a lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam School of Law with over five years of teaching experience, she is CEO and Founder of Guided Path-Tanzania, a non-profit advancing mental health awareness and legal reform advocacy.

Education:

• LL.M in Criminal Justice, University of Western Cape and Humboldt University
• LL.B (Honours), University of Dar es Salaam

Her research interrogates autonomy in Global South mental healthcare through decolonial and feminist lenses, arguing for relational autonomy models grounded in Ubuntu philosophy (communal solidarity/Ujamaa), feminist critiques of oppression, and anti-colonial analysis of mental health institutions. This interdisciplinary work synthesizes law, ethics, psychiatry, and sociology to challenge Western-centric frameworks and develop contextually responsive regulatory approaches for low-resource settings like Tanzania.

Scholarly output centers on decolonizing mental health law, exemplified by her 2025 publication analyzing anti-colonial autonomy frameworks. This research bridges legal theory with mental health policy, emphasizing indigenous knowledge systems and exposing power imbalances in international human rights discourse—highlighting urgent needs for context-specific solutions that center Global South experiences.

No scientific awards are documented in available sources.

Tizeba provides undergraduate Criminal Law tutoring and postgraduate research support, leveraging prior lecturing experience at Dar es Salaam. No formal PhD/Master’s supervisees or research grants are mentioned in the text.

She actively contributes to the Mason Institute (Edinburgh Law School), co-develops the university’s transdisciplinary 'Decolonising Academic Knowledge' course, and serves as Research Associate for the 'Decolonisation and Impact Agenda' project within CAHSS. Additional affiliations include the Global Alliance for Behavioural Health and Social Justice (USA), UN International Law Seminar Alumni Network (Switzerland), and Tanganyika Law Society (Tanzania), alongside her role as Attorney and Advocate of Tanzania’s High Court.