Professor and Chair
Garinger 113 A
704-687-2355

Dr. Akin Ogundiran is Chair of the Africana Studies Department and Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology & History at University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He was a former Director of African-New World Studies 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. Dr. Ogundiran has received support for his research from 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, his latest book (co-edited with Toyin Falola) is Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Indiana University Press, August 2007). He is currently co-editing (with Cameron Monroe) Landscapes of Power: Regional Perspectives on West African Polities in the Atlantic Era. Dr. Ogundiran serves on the Editorial Boards of African Archaeological Review (Springer, USA) and Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa (Taylor and Francis, UK). 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), and Materialities and Meanings of Rituals in Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Society of Historical Archaeology Annual Conference, January 2009, Toronto). Dr. Ogundiran is the 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 Interest:
• Cultural History: Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora
• Archaelogy of State and Society in the Atlantic Age
• Material Culture
• African Modernities

Selected Recent Publications:

"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) In Press.

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

(with T. 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.

• Senior Seminar      
• African Diaspora Cultures in the Americas
• African Modernities
• African Civilization (Fall 2009 Syllabus)

Recent Keynote Address:

• City of Newton (NC) 2009 Unity Day Guest Speaker

       • Ubuntu: An African Philosophical Reflection on "One Community, One Humanity"