Dr. Akin Ogundiran, Ph.D.

Professor and Chair

Dr. Akin Ogundiran is Chair of the Africana Studies Department and Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology & History at University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He has previously taught in the Department of History at Florida International University, Miami. Trained in Nigeria and the U.S., he received his Ph.D. in Archaeological Studies from Boston University. His current research focuses on issues of empire, material culture and cultural history in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1830s. He is especially interested in Yoruba cultural history in the Atlantic World. His teaching encompasses African Archaeology, Precolonial African History, African Modernities, Atlantic Slavery and the Middle Passage, and The African Diaspora Cultures. He has conducted research in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the United States, and has received support for his research from Dumbarton Oaks, Social Science Research Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation-supported programs, among others.

Author of several publications, including Archaeology and History in Ilare District, 1200-1900 (Cambridge Monograph in African Archaeology 55, 2002), Dr. Ogundiran is also editor of Precolonial Nigeria (Africa World Press, 2005). He co-edited (with Toyin Falola) Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2007) and (with Cameron Monroe) Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2012). He is currently co-editing Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic (with Paula Saunders). Dr. Ogundiran serves on the editorial board of African Archaeological Review (Springer, USA), Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa (Taylor and Francis, UK), Ofo: Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and Notes and Records, among others. He has convened major conferences and symposia including the Haitian Constitutional Reform (2007), African Culture and Development (2007), Orisa Music and Dance: Discourses of Modernity and Transnationalism (2008), Materialities and Meanings of Rituals in Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Society of Historical Archaeology Annual Conference, January 2009, Toronto), Presidency of Barack Obama (2010), and the New African Diaspora in the US (2011). He also recently curated two exhibitions - one on stamps, and the other on his archaeological research in the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, Nigeria.

Dr. Ogundiran is recipient of the 2006 University of Texas Africanist Award for Research Excellence. In 2007, he was awarded a Certificate of Special US Congressional Recognition for Excellence in Service. He is a member of the Mu Chapter of Phi Beta Delta (Honor Society for International Scholars).

Education:

• Ph.D., Boston University
• M.Sc., University of Ibadan
• B.A. (First Class Honors), Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife

Areas of Research Interest:

• Cultural History: Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora
• Archaelogy of State and Society in the Atlantic Age
• Material Culture
• African Modernities
• African Diaspora Studies

Selected Publications:

(with Cameron Monroe), eds., Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa: Archaeological Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

“Potters Marks and Social Relations of Ceramic Distribution in the Oyo Empire,” Azania: Journal of Archaeological Research, 46, 3 (November 2011), with Paula Saunders, pp. 317-335.

"Material Life and Domestic Economy in a Frontier of Oyo Empire during the Mid-Atlantic Age," International Journal of African Historical Studies 43, 2 (2009), pp. 351-385.

"Frontier Migrations and Cultural Transformations in Yoruba Hinterland, ca. 1575-1700: The Case of Upper Osun," in Toyin Falola and Aribidesi Usman, eds, Movements, Border and Identities Formation in Africa (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009).

"African Atlantic Archaeology and Africana Studies: A Programmatic Agenda," The African Diaspora Archaeology Network Newsletter, June 2008: 1-25. 

(with Toyin Falola), eds., Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007).

"Four Millenia of Cultural History in Nigeria (ca. 2000 B.C. - A.D. 1900): Archaelogical Perspectives," Journal of World Prehistory 19, 2 (June 2005) 133-168.

ed., Precolonial Nigeria (Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 2005), 568 pages.

"Of Small Things Remembered: Beads, Cowries, and Cultural Translations of the Atlantic Experience in Yorubaland," International Journal of African Historical Studies 35, (2002): 427-457.
 

Current Research Projects:

• Cultural Translations of the Atlantic Experience in the Bight of Benin
• Archaeology of Oyo Empire and Colonization in the Mid-Atlantic Age
• Archaeology & Cultural History of Sacred Groves in the Black Atlantic World

Courses:

• African Diaspora Theory
• African Diaspora Cultures in the Americas
• African Modernities
• Yoruba Language and Culture
• African Civilization

Public Lectures:

• City of Newton (NC) 2009 Unity Day Guest Speaker
• Ubuntu: An African Philosophical Reflection on "One Community, One Humanity"
• Rollins College: Commercial Revolution and the Birth of a New Society in Atlantic Africa 
• Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil: “From Politics of Resistance to Pedagogy of Renewal: The Legacies of the African Diasporas in the Making of American Democracies.” Keynote Address, CAPES/FIPSE Brazil-US Symposium on Legacies of African Diaspora in Brazil and the United States. May 26th to 28th, 2011.
• “Crises of Culture and Consciousness in the Postcolony: What is the Future for Nigeria?,” Keynote Address, CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN POST-COLONIAL NIGERIA: CONFERENCE IN HONOR OF ULLI BEIER. November 28 – 30, 2011, University of Ibadan, Ibadan.