Meet Our Research Team
Prof. Dr. Muyiwa Falaiye
Director, IADS & Lagos ACC
Muyiwa Falaiye, Ph.D, FNAL is a Professor of African Socio-Political Philosophy and an expert in African and Diaspora Studies. With over 60 publications in high impact local and international journals, and frontline peer-reviewed books, Falaiye has, through his research and teaching activities, demonstrated competence in Identity and African Diaspora Studies, African Philosophy and Philosophy of Development. His commitment to transformative research has earned him awards and commendations, including: the prestigious Fellowship at the Centre for African Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA and several African Studies Travel Grants. He has leadership hands-on-experiences in coordinating interdisciplinary and collaborative researches. At different times, he has served as member of the Board of several journals and book series, including the African Social Studies Series published by E.J. Brill, Netherlands. He was Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos (2015 – 2019) . He is currently the Director of the collaborative research Institute between the University of Lagos and the University of the West Indies – Institute of African and Diaspora Studies (IADS). His future research is to develop a theoretical frame for reconfiguring African Studies and to set a new agenda for African Studies scholars. Prof. Dr. Falaiye is also the Director of Lagos ACC.
Email: ofalaiye@unilag.edu.ng
Prof. Dr. Ayo Yusuff
Academic Coordinator
Ayo YUSUFF is a Research Professor of Linguistics and Language Engineering at the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, University of Lagos. He studied Linguistics and Yoruba Language at the University of Lagos and University of Ibadan, Nigeria. In 2007, he was a member of the team of linguists that produced the Yoruba version of Local Language Program for Microsoft Corporation. In 2011, he participated in the production of a unified standard orthography for the Yoruba language cluster adopted for the writing of Yoruba in Nigeria, Republic of Benin and the Republic of Togo. In 2017, he was in the team that developed the English-Yoruba Glossary of HIV, AIDS and Ebola Related Terms, which was published with him as Lead Editor. He has been an active player in the advocacy for the use of African indigenous languages in all areas of human communication since 2002. He specializes in Morpho-syntax and Language Engineering. He has over 35 publications in reputable journals and books. His doctoral thesis titled ‘Lexical Morphology in Yoruba Language Engineering’, presented to the School of Postgraduate Studies, University of Lagos in 2008, has been published by VDM Germany in 2010. To reconfigure African Studies, the role of African languages scholarship, especially by African linguists is germane. Africans’ mode of communication is still predominantly indigenous. Few Africans speak the colonial languages and this is not unconnected to their low literacy level. Knowing the problems of Africa and evaluating the effects of efforts at resolving them lie with scholars who are trained in the elicitation of data in African indigenous languages. The African Cluster Centre will benefit immensely from Ayo Yusuff’s expertise in African languages and cultures, as African peoples are not country bound. A people may spread among two, three or more countries in Africa. Harmonization and reconciliation of African common problems require specializations in African languages and cultures. There is hardly a cluster that may function adequately without the inclusion of his expertise.
Email: ayusuff@unilag.edu.ng ; yoyussuf@yahoo.co.uk
Prof. Dr. Peju Layiwola
Professor of Art History
Peju Layiwola had a Ph.D in Art History from the University of Ibadan. In her teaching, writing, and art, there is continuous engagement with themes of artifact pillage, repatriation and restitution, history, memory and gender Her work moves from the emotive space of art pillage in Africa captured in previous exhibitions: Benin 1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question (2010), Whose Centenary ? (2014) and Return (2018) into a gentler engagement with cloth and its multiple significations (Indigo Reimagined 2019). Some of her publications include Transcultural Conversations: American Art and Nigerian Art in Dialogue, NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, (2017); ‘Lace Culture and the Art of Dressing Well in Nigeria’, African Lace: A History of Trade, Creativity and Fashion in Nigeria and ‘Benin Massacre; Memories and Experiences’, Benin Kings and Rituals, Court Arts from Nigeria, Museum of Ethnology, Vienna, 2007. Layiwola is actively involved in the campaign to return expropriated Benin Art
She has received several awards: Distinguished Researcher’s Award, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, 2007; Two Central Research Grants of the University of Lagos; Tyson Scholar at the Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, Arkansas, USA (2019); Terra Foundation grant for American Art in 2018; three CAA-Getty Alumni grant (2021/2018/2013), Nominated US International Leadership Programme (IVLP) 2011: US Lagos State Consulate Grant 2017 and the US Alumni Exchange Award 2018. Layiwola was also a recipient of the Goethe Resident Artist grant, (KNW), Dusseldorf 2017. She currently has a British Council grant for Sub Saharan Africa, 2021.
Layiwola is President of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA). She has an active studio practice and recently curated the Resist: The art of Resistance exhibition at the Rautenstrauch Joest Musuem, Koln Germany (Decemebr 2020-January 9, 2022). She has served as artist in residence, in the Arts of Africa and the Global South Research Programme, (RAW) of Rhodes University, Grahamstown in South Africa, 2018; Artist-in –Residence, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany, 2017; and the Triangle Workshop, Alakuko, Lagos, Nigeria, 2010 organised by The British Museum in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Lagos.
Email: pejulayiwola1967@gmail.com; alayiwola@unilag.edu.ng
Prof. Dr. Taibat Lawanson
Professor of Urban Planning
Taibat Lawanson is a Professor of Urban Management and Governance at the University of Lagos, Nigeria where she leads the Pro-Poor Development Research Cluster and serves as Co-Director at the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development. She is an urban development expert and holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria
Her research focuses on the interface of social complexities, urban realities and the pursuit of spatial justice in Africa. She is well known for her inter-sectoral work which engages students, policy makers, local communities and civil society actors. She is well published with over seventy articles in both academic and popular platforms.
A recipient of numerous academic awards, she has received research funding from DFID, DAAD, Norweigan Research Council, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, British Academy and the Royal Academy of Engineering, UKRI, Africa Multiple of the University of Beyreuth and Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Fund among others. She led the technical support team for the drafting of the Lagos Resilience Strategy and has participated in the development of various policy documents leading to the New Urban Agenda, the Nigeiran National Economic Development Plan (2021-2025), Lagos Urban Renewal Guidelines, Niger State Development Policy, Ikorodu Sub-regional Masterplan and the Lagos Island North Action Plan.
Taibat currently serves on the international advisory committee of UNHABITAT’s flagship ‘State of the World’s Cities’. She is also a member of the editorial/advisory committees of major urban studies journals including Urban Studies, Urban Forum and Area Development and Policy. She is a member of the board of directors of the Lagos Studies Association, a pioneer World Social Science Fellow of the International (Social) Science Council, Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Town Planners and a proud alumna of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre.
Email: tlawanson@unilag.edu.ng ; tolawanson@gmail.com
Prof. Dr. Anthony Okeregbe
Associate Professor in Philosophy
Anthony Okeregbe, Ph.D, is an Associate Professor in Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Lagos (UNILAG), where he earned his doctorate in 2004. He earned a Certificate in Andragogy and Competency-based Adult Learning Mechanisms from MDF Training and Consultancy in The Netherlands in 2009 and Certificate in Basic Psycho-Trauma Healing skills, Nasarawa State University, Keffi (2020). His teaching and research interests are in Philosophy of Religion, Phenomenology/Existential Philosophy and Contemporary African Philosophy. Dr. Okeregbe, who is also an affiliate of the, Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, UNILAG, is a , Catalyst Fellow of the Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2020/21, Fellow of the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany, 2022/2023 Academic Year, and also Principal Investigator, Lagos African Multiple Cluster of Excellence of the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He is also a Fellow at the Moi University African Cluster Centre of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence for the year 2023.
His new interest in African Studies has drawn him into research projects on African knowledge production, African sonic pedagogies, sexualities, amongst others. In the same vein his exposure to Psycho-Spiritual therapies and mental health has informed his current research endeavour into African existential predicament and methodologies of wellness. He is a member of the African Studies Association of Italy (ASAI), an Associate Member of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (CRVP), Washington DC, USA, Pan African Society for Musical Arts Education – International Society for Music Education (PASMAE-ISME), and a resource person for Lux Terra Leadership Foundation, Abuja, Nigeria. Prior to his academic career, Okeregbe was Features Editor (Sunday) of The Guardian, Lagos, Nigeria, where he is presently a Visiting Member of the Editorial Board. Widely published in books and journals, Dr. Okeregbe is author with Muyiwa Falaiye of “Women Sages in Male Epistemic Spaces: An Analysis of Patriarchal Forces in Female Knowledge Production“ (Brill, in press),co-editor of Between Faith and Social Activism: Essays in Honour of Fr. George Ehusani (2021) and A Study in African Socio-Political Philosophy (2012), and author of “De-globalizing African ‘Truths’: Some Insights from Frantz Fanon et al” (2018), amongst others.
Email: tonyokeregbe@yahoo.co.uk ; aokeregbe@unilag.edu.ng
Prof. Dr. 'Kayode Eesuola
Research Associate Professor at IADS
‘Kayode Eesuola is currently a Research Associate Professor at the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, University of Lagos. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, with a unique doctoral dissertation that provides the political interpretations of the songs, music and behaviour of Fela Anikulapo Kuti between 1970 and 1997. Eesuola won the 2008 Junior Fulbright Scholarship/Study of United States Institutes (SUSI FY08), and is an alumnus of the Institute of American Politics and Political Thoughts, University of Massachusetts, USA. He had pre-doctoral fellowship in the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute, Amherst, and Postdoctoral Fellowship in the North West University, Mafikeng, South Africa. A collaborative, gender-objective researcher and research leader with track records, Eesuola heads both the Governance and Financial Integrity as well as Migration and Cross Boarder research clusters at the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, University of Lagos. He is a media personality and public affairs analyst. His research focus includes African political thoughts and political behaviour; and he has extensively published on them both in local and international outlets. Eesuola’s current research interest is built around reconfiguring African Studies through deployment and mobility of Indigenous knowledges for addressing socio-political challenges, and, at present, he has an 18 month research running on synergising the socio-political values of Ifa in Nigeria and Benin Republic, West Africa.
Email: oeesuola@unilag.edu.ng ; foomoterribly@yahoo.com
Dr. Ademola Kazeem
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
Dr. Ademola K. FAYEMI is a Principal Investigator at the African Cluster Centre of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Lagos. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Johannesburg in 2017, and a Research Fellow at the Moi University African Cluster Centre of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, Kenya in 2022. His research interests include African ethics, environmental ethics, research ethics, social epistemology and global health. Dr. Fayemi’s current research is on critically integrating normative ideas from African ethical landscape and exploring what they plausibly entail for global health research justice.
Dr. Akinmayowa Akin-Otiko
Senior Research Fellow at IADS
Paul Akinmayowa AKIN-OTIKO (OP) Ph.D.
AKIN-OTIKO, Akinmayowa is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, (IADS) University of Lagos and has special interest in the Religions, Cultures and Traditional Medicine of the Africans. He has a BA and MA in Philosophy, from the University of Ibadan, in 1996 and 2006 respectively; and in 2013, he defended his Ph.D. in African Religion and Belief System, from the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. Over the years he has engaged in researches and discusses in the area of African Traditional Medicine. He is a member of different academic Traditional Medicine Practitioners associations. He has written books, contributed chapters in books, as well as published in different journals. His current research interest includes Bioethical issues in African Traditional Medicine and this has worn him a Fellow of the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies (BA). His interest falls within the Knowledge and Morality Research Section of the ACC.
Email: pakin-otiko@unilag.edu.ng
Prof. Dr. Peter Oni
Associate Professor in Philosophy
Peter Oni, (PhD) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Lagos, Nigeria. He holds a Degree in Philosophy from the University of Niamey (Niger Republic), a Masters Degree in Philosophy from the University of Abidjan in Côte D’Ivoire and a Ph.D in Political Philosophy from The University of Lagos (Unilag). He teaches History of Philosophy, Sociopolitical Philosophy and Postmodernism and has published both locally and internationally.
Prof. Dr. Oni is a member of the Advisor Board of the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies (IADS) University of Lagos. He is also a member of The Association for African Studies in Italy (ASAI) He has attended Conferences in Nigeria, Africa and Overseas. Prof. Dr. Peter Oni speaks French fluently.
Email: onipeter@hotmail.com ; pioni@unilag.edu.ng
Dr. Feyi Ademola Adeoye
Senior Research Fellow at IADS
Feyi Ademola- Adeoye is a Linguist whose core areas of expertise and teaching are morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology. She obtained a B. A. In English & Education from the University of Ilorin in 1990, Masters in English from the University of Lagos in 1998 and a Ph.D in Linguistics from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South-Africa in 2011. With over 20 publications in reputable local and international journals and peer-reviewed books. Ademola-Adeoye has, through her research and teaching activities, shown competence in Theoretical linguistics and language studies. Dr. Ademola-Adeoye is a member of the American Names Society (ANS) and the International Association for World Englishes (IAWE).
Email: fademolaadeoye@gmail.com ; fademola-adeoye@unilag.edu.ng
Prof. Dr. Franca Attoh
Professor of Sociology
Franca Attoh holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Lagos. She is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Lagos. Prof. Attoh is a specialist in irregular migration, Crime and Delinquency, Gender studies, Sociology of the family, Social Change and Culture and heritage. Prpf. Franca Attoh had a decade experience in the Federation of Construction Industry (FOCI) a private sector organization prior to joining the services of the University of Lagos in 2007. She has 43 publications in both national and international Journals. Prof. Attoh is a laureate of the Ford Foundation and CODESRIA in Dakar Senegal. She is an alumnus of the CODESRIA Gender Institute and a fellow of the Institute of Security Nigeria. Prof. Franca Attoh has varied experience in research and consultancy and has consulted for several organizations including the Early Warning System in ECOWAS (2012-2014) IOM, NAPTIP (2009-2012) NIMC (2014-2015) and NPF. The Wage Indicators of the Netherlands (2015-2016) and was a member of the team constituted by the Austin Institute at the University of Texas that collaborated with the Vatican to research on the Global Decline in Christian Marriage between 2015 to 2017.
Dr. Abisoye Eleshin
Research Fellow at IADS
Abisoye Eleshin is a Research Fellow at IADS. He studied Linguistics/Yorùbá at the University of Lagos and graduated with First Class (Hons.) in 2008. Abisoye has a Ph.D. in Yorùbá Language from the same institution. His area of research includes African Language, linguistics and culture, with special interest in aspects Yoruba language. For his Ph.D., his research is on the Aspect of Nominalisation in Yorùbá Language where he claimed that there is a unified headedeness analysis in the three kinds of word formation in Yorùbá, namely prefixation, reduplication and compounding. He has also done some researches in translation studies and has done various translation works for both government and non-governmental organisations.
Dr Eleshin is also a playwright, his latest play titled Matiiku has just been presented and staged for the public. He is a member of the Yorùbá Studies Association of Nigeria, Linguistics Association of Nigeria as well as the Linguistics Association of Ghana. He has presented research reports on the development of African languages and worldview in general and Yoruba in particular, at local and international conferences, seminars and workshops. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Missouri, Columbia MO, USA. He has scholarly publications on various aspects of Yorùbá Studies. Dr. Eleshin has incorporated the model of using documentary production for research reporting. Some of his research documentaries include Lagos Ownership and Identities; Concept and Context of African Development and When Borders don’t Matter.
Email: aeleshin@unilag.edu.ng ; bisoyeeleshin@gmail.com
Dr. Oluwatoyin Olokodana-James
Lecturer in Creative Arts
Oluwatoyin Olokodana-James is a three time awardee (2008 – 2011) of the Lagos State University scholarship program and has a Ph.D in Theatre Arts from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. She is an academic, researcher, and theatre practitioner in pure African premise. She is presently a lecturer at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Oluwatoyin is an alumna of the Harvard Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research USA, a Fellow of the Ife Institute of Advanced Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and a Fellow of Theatre Arts – National Association of Nigerian Theatre and Allied Arts Practitioners. She is currently a Principal Investigator in the University Lagos African Cluster Centre, a centre of the African Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth, Germany. As an academic as well as a researcher, her interests are in African Dance, Theatre, Film, and Gender Studies, interrogating ethnocentric identities and the Trans-sociological hybridization of concepts and forms in African studies. Aside from developing and incorporating theories into performance arts, she also engages perspectives on Nigeria’s creative industry and cultural policy. As a theatre practitioner, Oluwatoyin has credits in many film and theatre productions.
Email: oolokodanajames@unilag.edu.ng ; olokodanajames@yahoo.com ; olokodanajames@gmail.com
Prof. Dr. Patrick Oloko
Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies
Patrick Oloko is a Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies in the Department of English, University of Lagos. His main research interest is Gender in African Postcolonial literature, with emphasis on understanding how the corrective goals of feminist writings are expressed using the ascetic infrastructure of the novel.
As a literary critic Prof. Dr. Oloko is positioned to bring a measure of eclectic and interdisciplinary approach to his engagement of cultural materials in other genres and media. The ways that the oral, written, performance and screen arts dovetail into one another within the spectrum of the narrative is only becoming clearer as artists and writers reshape their techniques to meet new tastes and thirst. His research in this direction is geared towards understanding the complementarities of forms and the intrinsic and extrinsic exchanges and undercurrents shaping their dynamic frames.
Prof. Dr. Oloko is the editor of The Fiction of Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo: Issues & Perspectives (2008) and In Theory and In Practice: Engaging the Writings of Hope Eghagha (2015), among other essays published as book chapters and journal articles. He served as Regional Coordinator (RC), heading the Lagos team on the European Research Council (ERC) funded research project, The Cultural Politics of Dirt in Africa:1880-Present, from 2013-2016 under the FP7 grant period. He was co-recipient (with Ute Roeschenthaler of the University of Frankfurt, Alessandro Jedlowski of University of Rome and Ibrahima Wane, of Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal) of the Point Sud/German Research Council Award to conduct a workshop in Burkina Faso.
Prof. Dr. Olufunke Adeboye
Professor of Social History
Olufunke Adeboye is a Professor of Social History at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. She was a Visiting Research Associate at the Harriet Tubman Institute, York University, Toronto, Canada in 2006 and has held Visiting Research Fellowships at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham, UK (2004), the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Amherst College, USA (2006) and at the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, UK (2009/2010). Her research interests include: gender in Africa, pre-colonial and colonial Nigerian history, nineteenth and twentieth century Yoruba society, African historiography, and Pentecostalism in West Africa. She has made scholarly presentations at various academic conferences and is on the editorial board of various academic journals. She was the immediate past editor of the Lagos Historical Review, a journal of history domiciled in the Department of History and Strategic Studies, University of Lagos, which she edited from 2008-2016. In 2013, she won the Gerti Hesseling Prize awarded by AEGIS (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies) for the best journal article published in a European African Studies journal by an African scholar. She was Head of the Department of History and Strategic Studies, University of Lagos, from August 2013 to July 2016. Professor Adeboye was a member of the expert team set up by the Federal Government in 2013 to prepare the Country Report on “100 Years of the Nigerian Woman” to mark the centenary anniversary of the country. She was also a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue set up in 2013 to provide the template for the 2014 National Conference. Her current research on religion and development, among other things, seeks to deconstruct existing knowledge about anti-development orientations of religion. She is an International Project Consultant for Africa in a research network on “Modernization, Mega Churches and the Urban Face of Christianity in the South” which recently in 2019 won a $1.9 million grant funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Email: oadeboye@unilag.edu.ng
Dr. Moses Yakubu
Senior Research Fellow at IADS
Yakubu Moses Joseph is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, Nigeria. He holds a Ph.D. in History and Strategic Studies, a Certificate of Completion of Course on the Implementation of the UN Security Council Resolutions on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Africa, jointly awarded by Peace Operations Training Institute and UN Women, and also, a Certificate of Completion of Course on Conflict Analysis from the United States Institute of Peace. His research interest includes African studies, development, peace and conflict studies, and gender/women studies. He has attended and presented papers at both national and international conferences. In 2017, he presented a paper entitled: “Africa’s Children in Armed Conflict: Fundamental Human Rights Implications, at the Department of African Studies, University of Texas, at Austin, America. In 2010, he won the “Sexuality in Africa Prize Award” from the Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre, Lagos, Nigeria, sponsored by the FORD FOUNDATION.
He has published in several edited books and journals within Nigeria and beyond. Some of his recent works are: “The Commodification and Objectification of Women in Hip Hop Music in Nigeria: Implications for Gender Equality;” “Women and the Liberian Civil War, 1989-2003;””Child Insurgents and Boko Haram Insurgency: Case Studies from Nigerian, Cameroon and Chad,” “The Pitfalls of Unilateralism: The United States in Syria;” “Boko Haram Insurgency and Sustainable Development in Nigeria;” “Women Peacemaking Initiatives and Sustainable Development: The Role of Women in Peacemaking Process during the Liberian Civil War, 1989 – 2003; and “Economic Terrorism in Nigeria: An Analysis of the Impact of Boko Haram Insurgency and Niger Delta Militancy on National Development.” Presently, besides his research activities, he teaches Introduction to African and Diaspora Studies, and Problems of Nation Building in West and Central Africa.
Email: yakubumosesjo@gmail.com
