Participants

Click on names in orange for more information

  • Olaoye Abioye

Olaoye Abioye is Professor of French Studies, formerly of Olabisi Onabanjo University. Among his many accomplishments, he translated the five novels of Fagunwa into French, and also translated into Yoruba French writings by famous authors such as Samuel Beckett and Sembène Ousmane.

  • Oba Adedokun Abolarin

Oba Adedokun Abolarin, Aroyinkeye I, is the Òràngún of Òkè-Ìlá Òràngún. He is an accomplished political scientist, international relations expert, and lawyer. Until his royal installation, he was the principal partner of Dokun Abolarin & Co., a firm of Solicitors and Legal Consultants, and was licensed to practice law in the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

Dapo Adeniyi attended the University of Ibadan, Nigeria where he studied Theatre Arts and also founded a literary magazine, The River Prawn. His first play, Helot, was broadcast by the world service of the BBC in 1986. Also he translated D. O. Fagunwa’s Irinkerindo Ninu Igbo Elegbeje into English, Expedition to the Mount of Thought, published by the Ife University Press, in 1994. Dapo Adeniyi is a writer of screenplays. The programmes division of the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, in 1988 commissioned him to write the screenplay for a special production of Wole Soyinka’s autobiographical novel, Ake: The Years of Childhood. Adeniyi has been a British Council Fellow at Downing College, University of Cambridge, and a visiting editor at the Times Literary Supplement, TLS, London and the London Literary Review. He participated in a number of international events in arts and publishing including the cultural proceedings of the World Bank, Florence, Italy: The Southern African Development Community, SADC, Maputo, Mozambique; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; the Lebanese American University, LAU, Beirut, Lebanon and the London and Zimbabwe Bookfairs. For many years Adeniyi was the Arts and Reviews editor for the Daily Times of Nigeria, an arts consultant to Channels Television, Lagos, and founding editor of Glendora Review and Glendora Books Supplement. He is the publisher of the arts review magazine Position: International Arts Review, and also works as the managing director of the multimedia production company, Back Page Productions.

  • Gbemisola Adeoti

Gbemisola Adeoti is Professor in the English Department and Director of the Institute of Cultural Studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His areas of teaching and research include Dramatic Literature, Poetry, Literary History/Theory, and Popular Culture. Adeoti is author of the book, Voices Offstage: Nigerian Dramatists on Drama and Politics (2009), and the short monograph, Aesthetics of Adaptation in Contemporary Nigerian Drama (2010). In addition, he is the editor of Muse and Mimesis: Critical Perspectives on Ahmed Yerima’s Drama (2007), and co-editor of Intellectuals and African Development: Pretension and Resistance in African Politics (with Bjorn Beckman, 2006); After the Nobel Prize: Reflections on African Literature, Governance and Development (with Mabel Evwierhoma, 2006); and IBA: Essays on African Literature in Honour of Oyin Ogunba (with Wole Ogundele, 2003). Adeoti was once a Reporter/Researcher with The News magazine, Lagos, before joining the academia. He is also a poet and author of the collection of poems, Naked Soles (2005), and other poems in edited anthologies. He was a British Academy Visiting Fellow at the Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds, United Kingdom, in 2008, and a Postdoctoral Fellow of the African Humanities Program in residence at the International Institute for Advanced Studies of Culture, Institutions and Economic Enterprises (IIAS), Accra, Ghana from 2009-2010. Adeoti is currently Presidential Fellow of the African Studies Association/ACLS (2012).

Babafemi Babatope began his career as a lecturer in 1995, teaching in Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo, Ondo State, Nigeria. He left for the Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos, in 2004 where he has been lecturing in the Department of Theatre Arts and Music since then. He has attended many academic conferences and workshops within and outside Africa and published in academic journals. In addition to teaching and scholarly work, Babafemi has directed several plays, written a few, and acted on stage and screen. He is presently researching on a project titled “From Script to Screen: a Directorial Model for Nigerian Film Production”.

Tola Badejo is a Professor of Zoology and currently the Vice-Chancellor of Wesley University of Science and Technology in Ondo, (WUSTO) Nigeria. In addition to a PhD in Zoology from University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife) he earned a distinction in a Post-Doctoral Diploma course in Environmental Science and Technology of the International Institute for Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering (IHE), (now UNESCO-IHE) in Delft, The Netherlands. Badejo taught at the Obafemi Awolowo University from 1981 to 2007. He became Professor in 1998, and served as Dean of the Faculty of Science from August 2003 to July 2007. Prof. Badejo was a Senior Research Advisor with Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Eastern Division before he was appointed the pioneer Vice Chancellor of WUSTO in 2008. Badejo has published five books and 65 academic papers in local and international journals in the broad field of Soil Entomology, Acarology, Ecotoxicology of Microarthropods and Environmental Studies in Agriculture. He also has to his credit 17 workshop papers and 11 technical reports. Badejo was a Georg Forster Fellow of the Alexander Van Humboldt Stiftung at the Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe, Germany from November 2000 to July 2002.

Gloria Chuma Ibe is Director at the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), Lagos.

D. S. Izevbaye is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Bowen University, Nigeria. Before moving to Bowen, he was Professor of English at the University of Ibadan, from where he retired in 2002. At Ibadan he served as Head of the Department of English (1981-85), Dean of the Faculty of Arts (1985-87), and Provost, College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Law (1990-94). His scholarship straddles African and Caribbean literature, as well as theories of criticism and literary history. His pioneering work contributed to setting out the terms for scholarly engagement of major African and Caribbean writers in fiction, drama, and poetry. Among his extensive publications are such landmark essays as: “The State of Criticism in African Literature” (1975); “In His Own Image: Literature and the Recreation of Man” (1985); “Shifting Bases: The Present Practice of African Criticism” (1990); and “Elesin’s Homecoming: The Translation of the King’s Horseman” (1997). A festschrift in recognition of his scholarship appeared in 2008 under the title The Postcolonial Lamp, edited by Aderemi Raji-Oyelade and Oyeniyi Okunoye.

Dele Layiwola is a graduate of Ife and Leeds Universities. He earned a PhD from Leeds in 1986. He has been visiting scholar to Legon University, Ghana; Northwestern, Illinois and Ulster in Co. Derry. He was promoted full professor in 1998 and presently serves on the Governing Council of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria

Foluke Ogunleye is a Professor and Chair at the Department of Dramatic Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife. She obtained her B.A. in Dramatic Arts from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1982, and went on to acquire her Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Theatre Arts from the University of Ibadan. She is a teacher, filmmaker, producer, director, actress and writer with specialization in Theatre and Media Studies. Professor Ogunleye is the author of over sixty book chapters and articles in reputable international Journals. Her published books include African Video Film Today (2003), Theatre in Swaziland: The Past, the Present and the Future (2005), Theatre in Nigeria: Different Faces (2007) and Africa through the Eye of the Video Camera (2008).

She presently serves as the Editor of Humanities Review Journal. She is also on the Editorial Board of Journal of African Media Studies housed in the University of Westminster, England. Foluke Ogunleye is the Executive Director of the Ife International Film Festival, which will feature its fourth edition soon.

Sola Olorunyomi, Ph.D., lectures in the Cultural and Media Studies unit of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the author of Afrobeat! Fela and the Imagined Continent, and is currently working on modernities of Islam(s) and the Yoruba cultural imaginary.

Femi Osofisan, aka Okinba Launko, wears many caps as journalist, social activist, poet, novelist, essayist, scholar, and most especially playwright, actor, song writer and theatre director. He is the author of scores of plays including classics such as A Restless Run of Locusts, The Chattering and the Song, Who’s Afraid of Solarin?, Once Upon Four Robbers, Morountodun, The Oriki of a Grasshopper, Birthdays Are not for Dying, Farewell to a Cannibal Rage, Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels, Yungba Yungba and the Dance Contest, and Another Raft. These are in addition to essay collections such as The Nostalgic Drum: Essays on Literature, Drama and Culture, and Literature and the Pressures of Freedom: Essays, Speeches and Songs. He has also been the editor or co-editor of many journals, including Opon Ifa, Journal of African and Comparative Literature, Black Orpheus, and The African Theatre Review. He has lectured widely and held many fellowships and residences across continents. He served, from 2000 to 2004, as the General Manager and Chief Executive of the National Theatre in Iganmu, Lagos. As Executive Artistic Director of the Chams Theatre Series, he has, so far, produced two stage adaptations of Daniel Fagunwa’s works, in both English and Yoruba. Femi Osofisan is the recipient of many awards and honours including the first T.M. Aluko Prize for Literature, the Association of Nigerian Authors award, the Fonlon-Nichols Award from the African Literature Association, and the Nigerian National Merit Award. A Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, he took his mandatory retirement from the University of Ibadan in 2011 after 38 years of teaching, and is currently Visiting Research Professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.

Pamela J. Olubunmi Smith is a professor in the Goodrich Scholarship Program at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, where she teaches English Composition, Humanities and Women Studies. A courtesy professor in the English Department, she also teaches seminars on Melting Pot American Immigrant/Ethnic literatures and Black Women Writers in Africa, America and the African diaspora. Her research interests include translations (three translated works published), Yoruba language and culture studies, women’s issues, Francophone and Anglophone African Literatures. She is a Graduate Fellow and has won many grants and faculty awards, including Excellence in Teaching at UNO.

  • Ropo Sekoni

Ropo Sekoni is emeritus professor of English and Communication at Lincoln University. Before Lincoln, Professor Sekoni taught literary theory and poetics of oral traditions at the University of Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University). He is currently on the editorial board of Nigeria’s The Nation, a daily newspaper for which he also writes a weekly column. Professor Sekoni is the author of Folk Poetics: A Sociosemiotic Study of Yorùbá Trickster Tales. He has also written many field-shaping essays on the intertextual relations of modern African and African diasporic literary writing and popular, folk imagination.

Olabiyi Yai retired recently as the permanent representative of the Republic of Benin at UNESCO where he was Chairman of the Executive Board. Prior to moving to Paris for the UNESCO appointment, Yai was professor of Yorùbá Studies and chair of the department of African & Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Florida. Professor Yai was also a senior scholar for many decades at the University of Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University). The extent and quality of Yai’s numerous publications on the theory of practice in Yorùbá language, literature, arts, culture, and philosophy are unsurpassed.