UI don wins £879,117 British Academy Award

By Emmanuel Adeleke

Professor Olutayo Adesina of the University of Ibadan (UI) has won the sum of £879,117 in the 2023/2024 British Academy Awards.

Adesina, a former Head of Department of History, was announced as one of the eight new Global Professorships by the British Academy for 2023-2024.

The Global Professorships scheme aims to foster collaboration between leading international researchers and United Kingdom-based institutions on new and cutting edge research projects.

A statement dated April 11, 2024 by the British Academy said the latest cohort of Global Professors will undertake research project on a range of diverse issues.

These include the development of novel food system models to benefit society and the exploration of West African communities’ history through museum collections.

The 2023-24 Global Professorships awardees were arranged alphabetically by surname of the grant recipient.

Adesina was awarded £879,117 for his project, ‘The Town And Gown Interface: Ibadan and the Decolonisation Of Social Knowledge in the 20th Century, University of Manchester.’

The project by Adesina identified that, “in the 1950s, the University College, Ibadan (UCI), became the epicentre of a historiographical revolution that directly shaped the evolution and growth of the Nigerian nation-state.”

He wrote that the historical UCI became a movement that became an early instance of the decolonisation of knowledge.

“How did the academic, social, intellectual, and political beacon at UCI address the concerns and realities of ordinary people?

“To what extent was the work of academic historians and social scientists at UCI shaped by indigenous, vernacular epistemologies?,” the eminent historian asked.

The project identified the city of Ibadan as having its own rich, distinctive, cultural and intellectual identity.

“This project studies, for the first time, the interplay of nationalist historiography, academic social science and vernacular knowledge as mutually constitutive social epistemologies.

“The project combines a close study of key works in history and related disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, ethnomusicology, language and literature with extensive interviews and fieldwork in the city of Ibadan, South West Nigeria,” Adesina added.

The British Academy stated that the award is for the 2023 Global Professorships, adding that previous award winners can be found on the Global Professorships past awards page.