Participants

Ayo Adeduntan studied for his Ph.D. in African Studies at the University of Ibadan. He now teaches Cultural Studies in the Institute of African Studies of the university. He is the author of What the Forest Told Me: Yoruba Hunter, Culture and Narrative Performance.

Adeleke Adeeko, President of the African Literature Association for 2017-2018, is Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University, Columbus. He is the author of Proverbs, Textuality, and Nativism in African Literature (1988); The Slave’s Rebellion: Literature, History, Orature (2005); Arts of Being Yorùbá: Divination, Allegory, Tragedy, Proverb, Panegyric (2017); and editor of Philip Quaque’s Letters to London (2017), and Celebrating D.O. Fagunwa: Aspects African and World Literary History (2017).

Arinpe G. Adejumo, playwright, poet, and critic is Professor and immediate past Head of the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She is the author of the play, Afàgo Kéyin Àparò and Ròóre, a collection of poems. Professor Adejumo is the author of the first book length study of dramatic satire in Yoruba language, Ìṣẹ̀fẹ̀ Nínú Àwọn Eré Onítàn Yorùbá (2001). In addition, she co-edited Ọ̀tun Ìmọ̀ Nínú Ìtàn Àròsọ D. O. Fagunwa (2016), a volume of essays to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of D. O. Fagunwa’s passing. Her current research focuses on the Tropes of Patriotism, Citizenship, Leadership, Governance and Development in Yoruba Literature. She is a member of Nigerian Academy of Letters.

Moradewun Adejunmobi is a professor in the African American and African Studies Department at the University of California, Davis with an interest in African literature, African popular culture, and Nollywood. She has previously taught at the University of Botswana and the University of Ibadan. She was the 2015-2016 President of the African Literature Association. She is the author of JJ Rabearivelo, Literature and Lingua Franca in Colonial Madagascar, and Vernacular Palaver: Imaginations of the Local and Non-Native Languages in West Africa and most recently co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of African Literature. Her research on Nigerian film, media, and performance has appeared in Popular Communication, Cultural Critique, Black Camera and Cinema Journal among others.

Gbemisola Adeoti is Professor in the English Department 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. He was Presidential Fellow of the African Studies Association/ACLS in 2012.

Akin Adesokan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, and of Cinema and Media Studies at the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include Roots in the Sky, a novel, Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics, a critical study, and Celebrating D. O. Fagunwa: Aspects of African and World Literary History, a co-edited volume (with Adeleke Adeeko) on the work of Daniel Fagunwa, the pioneer Yoruba novelist. His writings have also appeared in AGNI, Screen, Glänta, Social Dynamics, African Affairs, Black Camera, Research in African Literatures, Frame, and Textual Practice, as well as in numerous edited volumes. He is a Contributing Editor of The Chimurenga Chronic, the Cape Town-based journal of politics and ideas.

Bisi Adigun for the past three years Adigun has worked as a visiting lecturer of African Theatre, Performance Studies and Film Studies at the School of Creative Arts, Trinity College, Dublin, where he earned his PhD in Drama Studies in 2013. A holder of a B.A in Dramatic Arts, an M.A in Drama Studies, and an M.A in Film and Television, Adigun is also a performer, documentarist, playwright, director and creative producer. In 2003, he founded Arambe Productions, Ireland’s first African theatre company for which he had produced and directed over 25 productions in Ireland, Nigeria and the USA. Adigun’s first volume of plays, An Other Playboy, The Butcher Babes and Home Sweet Home, was published by Universal Books UK in 2017. He is a contributor to and co-editor of The Soyinka Impulse: Essays on Wole Soyinka (BookCraft, 2019). Adigun’s research interests are in Wole Soyinka’s Yoruba Tragedy, Postcolonial Theory, Intercultural Theatre, and Nollywood.

Kayode Niyi Afolayan is affiliated to the Department of English, University of Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. His areas of teaching and research include dramatic arts, poetry studies, literary theories and criticism. After completing his Ph.D degree with the title “Myths, Archetypes and Social Conflicts in Selected Poetry of Wole Soyinka, in 2011, he has continued to make critical statements on Wole Soyinka’s works across genres in books and journals. His most recent titles include, “Ogun’s Tirade in the Market of Chaos: A Study of Soyinka’s Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known” (2012), “Soyinka’s Archetypal Triad and the Dialectics of Terror” (2016), Wole Soyinka’s A Play of Giants and King Baabu: The Crises Between Ideology and (Social) Vision” (2017) and “Soyinka’s Poetry, the Complex Cult and Freedom Dialectics: Between BJ and Others” (2018). Since 2012, he has been involved in a commissioned project for producing instructional materials for secondary schools in Nigeria, in the English Language and literature in English, by Evans/ Nelson Publishers.

Kunle Ajibade is Co-Founder/Publisher and Executive Editor of TheNEWS weekly magazine and PM NEWS, an evening daily. He had worked as a journalist in African Concord (senior correspondent) and in the African Guardian (assistant editor). In 1995, he was jailed for life because of a story published in TheNEWS and was only released in 1998 when his jailer, General Sani Abacha, died. Ajibade won the 1998/1999 Feuchtwanger Fellowship to write his prison memoir, Jailed for Life: A Reporter’s Prison Notes, published in 2003 by Heinemann Educational Books (Nig.) Plc. The book won the first Victor Nwankwo Book of the Year Award instituted by the Nigerian Book Fair Trust. In 2008, his second book, What a Country!, was published by BookCraft.

Tolulope Akinwole is a PhD student in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he recently earned a master’s degree in African Cultural Studies. He is interested in the everyday politics of the African urban space, in tracing the Afropolitan sensibilities of the African urban space and how this is shown in the Anglophone African novel. He is associate editor for Africanwriter.com, an online literary journal.

Adetayo Alabi teaches and researches African, African American, African Caribbean, and other world literatures and cultures in the Department of English at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Telling Our Stories: Continuities and Divergences in Black Autobiographies and was the editor of The Global South, published by Indiana University Press, between 2007 and 2013. During his tenure as the editor of The Global South, he edited special issues of the journal on Nollywood and The Global South (with others), Latin America in a Global Age, The Caribbean and Globalization, and Africa in a Global Age. His other publications have appeared in the Encyclopedia of the Yoruba, Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Literatures, and in The Companion to African Literatures. He has also published several book chapters, including those in The Nigeria-Biafra War: An Intellectual History; Ogoni’s Agonies: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria; The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities; Marvels of the African World: African Cultural Patrimony, New World Connections, and Identities; Yoruba Creativity: Fiction, Language, Life, and Songs; and in journals like Research in African Literatures, Liwuram, African Literature Today, and In-Between.

Awam Amkpa is Associate Professor in the Drama Department of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Before that, he was Senior Lecturer of Drama and Television at King Alfred’s University College in Winchester, England, and Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at Mount Holyoke College. He is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires, London: Routledge, 2003, and Archetypes, Stereotypes and Polytypes: Theatres of the Black Atlantic. He is co-founder and co-curator of the annual Real Life Pan-African Documentary Film Festival in Accra (Ghana), also the director of film documentaries including Winds Against Our Souls, It’s All About Downtown, National Images and Transnational Desires, and the feature film, Wazobia!, as well as the author of several articles in books and journals on modernisms in theatre, postcolonial theatre, black Atlantic issues, and film studies. Awam is also an art curator. Between 2011-2013, he curated “Africa: See You, See Me” in Beijing and Macau (China), Rome and Florence (Italy), Dakar, (Senegal) and Lagos (Nigeria). He also curated the shows: “Africa: Significaciones” at Centro Provincial de artes Plasticas y Diseño, Havana (Cuba 2017); “ReSignifications: European Blackamoors, Africana Readings” at Museo Bardini, Villa La Pietra and Galleria Biagiotti, Florence (Italy, 2015); “ReSignifications: Black Portraiture in the Mediterranean Blue” and ‘Wole Soyinka: Antiquities Across Times and Place’ under the MANIFESTA12 Biennale, Palermo (Italy) in 2018.

Chima Anyadike is a Professor of English at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he teaches African Fiction and Literary Theory. He has taught in Universities in Africa, United States of America and China.The underlying themes of the essays he has published in books journals and conference proceedings in these places derive from the fundamental need to decolonize the minds of Africans and recover balanced ways of thinking about and dealing with issues concening Africa in the wake of international slave trade, colonialism, racism and malevolent capitalism. He edited with Kehinde Ayoola, Blazing the Path: Fifty Years of Things Fall Apart and the collection of his essays, Wisdom and Uncertainty: Essays on African Fiction is forthcoming.

‘Tunde Awosanmi teaches at the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is a theatre/dramatic theorist and critic; a culture, philosophy and aesthetics comparatist; a theatre director and specialist in Soyinka’ studies.

Tunji Azeez is Associate Professor of Theatre, Film and Cultural Studies at the Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos. He has a B.A. (Hons) Dramatic Arts and M.A and PhD in Theatre Arts from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife and the University of Ibadan, respectively. His research interests include Gender/Feminist Theory and Criticism, War and Peace Studies, Theatre for Development, Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Film and Cultural Studies. He is co-editor Inside Nollywood: Issues and Perspectives on Nigerian Cinema, (2017), Critical Perspectives on Language, Literature and Communication Studies (2012), and editor, The Playwright and His Ideology: A Celebration of Fred Agbeyegbe (2011). As a practitioner, he has impacted significantly on the Nigerian entertainment industry as an artist trainer, writer, director, poet and jury member for award schemes. He has created contents and written stage, radio, television and film scripts for several organisations including the BBC Media Action, M-Net Africa Magic Original, Media Concepts and others. He is the Nigerian Regional Editor, The Theatre Times, editor, Akete: Journal of Performing Arts and Cultural Studies, former Acting Head, Department of Theatre Arts and Music, Lagos State University, Fellow, Institute of Policy Management Development and Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Tunde Babawale is Professor of Political Economy and International Relations in the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos. His teaching career spans 20 years, covering both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He was the founding, and until 2006, Managing Editor of the reputable UNILAG Journal of Politics. He was voted as the Best Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, by the students in a survey conducted by the University for the 2003/2004 academic session. He is the author of several article, book, and monograph publications including the two-volume Nigeria in the Crises of Governance and Development (2006), and Urban Violence, Ethnic Militias and Challenge of Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria (2003). Babawale has served as UNILAG Dean of Students’ Affairs, and as Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), Federal Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation. CBAAC co-hosted the First International Conference of the Fagunwa Study Group. Babawale currently serves as a Member of the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC). He is a member of many learned and academic associations and societies, including the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA), Historical Society of Nigeria, and the Third World Forum.

Femi Dunmade is a staff of the Department of English, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. He has a PhD in Literature-in-English and another one in English Literature, specializing in Modern African Poetry in the first Ph. D and the Renaissance thesis in Robert Browning’s poetry in the second one. His areas of teaching and research include Literary History/Theory, Poetry and the brief fiction, the short story and the novella. He is the author of Understanding Wole Soyinka: The Beatification of Area Boy and co-editor of Wole Soyinka: The African Literary Muse. He has published academic articles in national and international journals and books. He has also offered academic services to the Ministry of Education, Nigeria, and Evans / Nelson Publishers in Nigeria on matters relating to Literature-in English.

Denis Ekpo is Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the intra-faculty Comparative Literature Programme, University of Port Harcourt. A Europeanist interested in the intersections of philosophy, culture, art and literature, he created the concept of Post-Africanism. He has published extensively in the areas of art theory, postcolonial literature and post-imperial studies. Author of two books, namely, Philosophie et litterature africaine, and Neither anti-imperial anger nor the tears of the good white man. His manuscript titled Manifesto for a Post-African Art is completed and is currently assessed for publication. Has participated in many art projects within and outside Africa. He is Fellow of Stellenbosch Institute forAdvanced Study (STIAS).

Adéọlá Adijat Fálẹ́yẹ is on the Senior Lecture cadre in the Department of Dramatic Arts at the Obafemi Awolowo University. She received her Ph.D from the University of Ibadan on Yorùbá culture, orature and performance studies. A performer and orator, Fálẹ́yẹ has performed in over eighty-two national and international stage productions, and starred in twenty-five traditional, modern home-video productions and celluloid works. She has co-published and co-edited academic bilingual books, and translated works from English language to, and from Yorùbá language. Her collection of four poems included in Kíké Olóbùró (2003), was among the listed authors of WAEC and NECO recommended texts for years in Nigeria. To her credit are many albums on various Oríkì of some ancient cities, lineages and royalties among the Yorùbá, including: Tótó Ọba – (2008), Igbá Ọpẹ́ (2009), Ẹ Máa tú yagba (2010), Ariwo Ayọ̀, Oòrè Olóore Odùdùwà (2010), Jẹ́ Ká Gbáyé Pẹ́ (2011), Ìbàdàn Ọmọ Ajòro sùn (2012), Mo n Bóba Rèhà (2016) and Onínúúre Lọ (2018). Some of her academic research and publications include: Ẹ̀kà Kíkà Performative Aspect of Ilé-Orò Festival in Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún of the South-Western Nigeria (2005), Facial Marks (Ilà-Kíkọ): A Dying Art among the Yorùbá? (2008), Onídìrí and Òǹṣẹ̀sọ̀ọ́/Irun Dídì: The Creativity Spirituality of Yorùbá Hairstyles and Technology (2009), Orísun FM Radio Station and the Reclamation of Yorùbá Language (2011), Praise Poetry Performance in the Pantheon of Divinities: A Socio-Semantic and Cultural Interpretations (2011), Njẹ́ Àwọn Ọba Ṣì Wà ní Ipò Aláṣẹ Èkejì Òrìṣà Bí? (2014), A Semiotic Investigation of Àwòrò-Ọ̀sẹ́ and Ìsìnrò Festivals among the Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngún Ìgbómìnà People of Southwestern Nigeria (2015), Ìkúnlẹ̀ Abiyamọ nínú Èrò Ìjìnlẹ̀ Yorùbá: Ìdí Abájọ Agbára Obìnrin (2015), A Socio-Cultural Analysis of Orogún (Rivalry) (2016), Amazon’s Grace (2018). Fálẹ́yẹ’s edited works are: Àkójọpọ̀ Ọ̀rọ̀ Iyùn (2012), Ìwé Mímọ́ Ifá: Ẹ̀sìn Àkọ́dá Olódùmarè (2019).

Ainehi Edoro Glines is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches and researches on African literature, political theory, and literature in social media. Edoro is the founder and Editor of Brittle Paper (https://brittlepaper.com/), a leading online platform dedicated to African writing and literary culture. Her current book project is titled “Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think.” She also writes essays and commentaries about contemporary African literary culture in mainstream publications such as The Guardian and Africa is a Country.

Folasade Hunsu is a lecturer in the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. She teaches Postcolonial and African Literatures, Women’s Writing and African American Literature. Her research interests are Lifewriting, Women’s issues, and Postcolonial/African Literatures. She has won prestigious awards such as the British Academy Fellowship, Study of the United States Institute and the pre doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships of the African Humanities Program. Dr Hunsu’s publications have appeared in reputable journals of Lifewriting and African Literature.

Tolulope R. Ibikunle is a doctoral candidate at the department of linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan. She obtained her B.A. in Yoruba Language from the University of Ilorin in 2010, M.A in Yoruba Literature from the University of Ibadan (2014). She is currently working on the Representation of State in Yoruba Video films.

Tade Ipadeola is a poet, essayist, translator, and lead counsel at Tade Ipadeola & Co, Solicitors and Advocates, Ibadan. He is a past president of PEN International (Nigeria center) and a winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature for his work The Sahara Testaments. He is the author of A Time of Signs (2000) and The Rain Fardel (2005). He is anthologized in New Nigerian Poets edited by Ishmael Reed (2000). He served as legal adviser to the Association of Nigerian Authors 2011-2013. Tade Ipadeola is the 2009 winner of the Delphic Laurel in Poetry for his Yoruba poem, Odíderé – Songbird (Awarded in Jeju, South Korea) He was a Bellagio Artist Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation (2015). He has translated works from respected poets like W.H Auden, Joséphine Bacon and Tomas Transtromer into Yoruba and is working on translations from Daniel Fagunwa’s Yoruba novels into English. His work has been translated into Dutch, Korean, French, Kannada, Spanish and Xhosa.His latest work is the co-curation of A Deeper Country (with Maria McManus) for the Poetry Jukebox project in Belfast, Ireland.

Biodun Jeyifo, Harvard University Emeritus Professor of English, was awarded an Honorary Degree Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) from Obafemi Awolowo University during its 43rd combined convocations. Professor Jeyifo was recognized for his outstanding intellectual and academic achievements in the global arena of literary criticism, social activism, public discourse, and his significant positive impact on the study of African Literature, Theatre, Film, Africana Studies, African-American cultural studies, and post-colonial studies. Some of Jeyifo’s books include: The Yoruba Popular Travelling Theatre of Nigeria (1984); The Truthful Lie: Essays in a Radical Sociology of African Drama (1985); Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, Postcolonialism (2004); and Against the Predators’ Republic: Political and Cultural Journalism, 2007-13 (2016). (Compiled from sources including https://aaas.fas.harvard.edu/news/aaas-professor-biodun-jeyifo-awarded-honorary-degree-obafemi-awolowo-university)

Dele Layiwola, Professor, is a two-time Director of African Studies at the University of Ibadan, in Nigeria, and a former Director of the University Media Centre. Layiwola has published in such journals as: Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (U of Kansas); New Hibernia Review(U of St. Thomas, Minnesota); Ufahamu(UCLA); Asian and African Studies (Slovak Academy of Arts and Sciences); West African Journal of Archaeology; ODU: A Journal of West African Studies; Nigerian Field; Nigerian Forum; Africa and World Literature; African Notes; African Theatre (UK); African Study Monographs (Kyoto, Japan); Research in African Literatures and such on-line journals as Critical Stages and H-Net Reviews. Some of his recent publications are an edited book on Ibadan titled: The City-State of Ibadan: Texts and Contexts (2015); a book chapter on “Daniel Fagunwa and Yoruba Oral Tradition” (2017); “Revisiting Language in Two Wole Soyinka Plays” in Critical Stages/ Scenes Critiques (2017); “Tradition, Hegemony, and the Crises of Africa’s Academies” on H-Net (May, 2017). In addition to many awards, honours, and fellowships, Professor Layiwola was in 2012 elected to the Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL), the apex academy for the humanities in Nigeria. He served as the General Secretary of the Academy from 2012 – 2014 and had also served as the public orator of the Academy from 2015 – 2017.

Okey Ndibe is the author of the novels Foreign Gods, Inc. and Arrows of Rain as well as a memoir, Never Look an American in the Eye (winner of the 2017 Connecticut Book Award in the nonfiction category). He earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and has taught at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York; Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut; Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar). He was a 2015 Shearing Fellow of the Black Mountain Institute (BMI) at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is currently working on a novel titled Native Tongues.

Ndibe’s editorial pieces have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Hartford Courant (where his essays won state and national prizes), BBC online, The Guardian (UK), Financial Times, and D La Repubblica (Italy).

His website is: https://okeyndibe.com/; Twitter: @okeyndibe

Odia Ofeimun read political science at the University of Ibadan where his poem “The Poet Lied” won the University Competition in 1975. He did his NYSC as an Assistant Divisional officer at Kank8a in the old Kaduna state. He has worked as Administrative officer in the Federal Public service Commission in Lagos. He abandoned his PhD thesis to work as Private political secretary to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria in the Second Republic. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of the Guardian and Chairman of the Editorial Board of TheNEWS and Tempo magazines, so called Guerilla weeklies, during the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. Odia Ofeimun has served as publicity secretary, 1982-84; general secretary, 1984-1988 and President, 1993-1997, of the Association of Nigerian Authors. He has published nine collections of poetry, including The Poet Lied, Dreams at Work, and I Will Ask Questions with stones if they take my voice. While on a fellowship at the University of Oxford, he began writing poems for dance drama, some of them performed at Saddlers Well and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London before performances across several Nigerian states. His books on politics and culture include Taking Nigeria Seriously, A House of Many Mansions, In Search of Ogun – Soyinka In Spite of Nietzsche and When Does A Civil War Come to an End. Ofeimun won the Fonlon Nichols Award in 2010.

Olanike Olaleru is a lecturer at the English Department of Kwara State University, Malete, Kwara State, Nigeria. She teaches poetry, creative writing, American literature and literature of the Renaissance. Her areas of research interest include Poetry, Performance, and Creative Writing. Olanike has worked variously as a Reporter and Features Writer with defunct Weekend Concord, Lagos, as a Programme Researcher with Access to Justice, a law-based NGO in Lagos, and had run her own outfit as a book editor and publisher; before joining the academia.

Her published works include The Seed in the Ground: The Story of the Founding of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (2007), Cherishing Singleness…until your own company arrives (2002). Her poem “An Early Morning Ride to Town” (1991), was published in RISING VOICES: An Anthology of New Nigerian Poetry. Cook, D., Obafemi& Raji (eds.). Other publications include “The Use of Dictionary and Vocabulary Development” (2018), in Use of English: an Introductory Text. Kolawole, M.E.M &Ojaide, T. (eds.), “Oral Performance Techniques in the Works of D.O. Fagunwa” (2018) in Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on Orality, Literacy and Gender Studies. Osisanwo, A., Adebiyi-Adelabu, A., &Mosobalaje, A. (eds.).

Tejumola Olaniyan is Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and Wole Soyinka Professor of the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his BA and MA from the Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, and PhD from Cornell University. He has lectured at universities across continents. He headed the Department of African Cultural Studies, UW Madison, from 2015-2018, and was President of the African Literature Association (ALA) in 2014-2015, and elected to the executive board of the African Studies Association (ASA) in 2013-2015). He is the Editor in Chief of Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA), and directs the UW Madison African Diaspora and the Atlantic World Research Circle (ADAWRC). Some of his authored, edited or co-edited books include Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African American and Caribbean Drama (Oxford UP, 1995); Arrest the Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics (Indiana UP, 2004); African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory (Blackwell, 2010); Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique (Duke UP, 2016); State and Culture in Postcolonial Africa: Enchantings (Indiana UP, 2017); and Taking African Cartoons Seriously (MSU Press, 2018). He runs the comprehensive web encyclopedia, africacartoons.com.

Deji Olatoye is an enterprise lawyer and corporate governance/sustainability expert. A poet, playwright, literary critic and editorial cartoonist, his writing on areas as diverse as art, culture, law, sustainability and economics have been published in Chimurenga, Lagos Review of Art and Society, The Guardian(Nigeria), Dubliner Quarterly, thisisafrica.com and The Economist. As a member of UNESCO ‘Panel of Experts’ on the 2005 convention on cultural diversity, he participated in the expert consultation leading to the development of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2015. He was equally involved in the development of the ‘Integrated Business Reporting Guidelines’ for International Corporate Governance Network, a global body of the world’s largest institutional investors established for the promotion of corporate governance and sustainability. His play has been performed on stages in Lagos, Nigeria, and his poetry translated to Italian.

Diekara Oloruntoba-Oju is a researcher and a creative writer, currently on service in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme. She studied German and French at the Obafemi Awolowo University. Her interests are in contemporary bodily and textual practices in Africa and how they are framed by the politics of power and agency. Her work appears in the Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA) and the Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS) Bulletin. She has also published a novel titled When Lemon Grows on Orange Trees.

Omotayo Oloruntoba-Oju, Ph.D is a Professor of Literature with emphasis on Drama and Theatre at the Adekunle Ajasin University University in Nigeria. Her teaching and research have been in the areas of African Drama and Theatre and Literature of the African Diaspora. She has published widely on Wole Soyinka and other Nigerian as well as Caribbean Dramatists. Omotayo Oloruntoba-Oju has also been a Theatre Manager and Director, pioneer Director of the Ajasin Varsity Theatre and pioneer Head of the University’s Performing Arts Department. She is also a Catalyst Fellow of the University of Edinburgh.

Taiwo Oloruntoba‐Oju, PhD is a lecturer in English and Applied Language Studies at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria. His research has been in the areas of Africanity, language and culture, and has included aspects of Contrastive Rhetoric, Language and Gender, Comparative Yoruba-English rhetoric, African‐European Paroemiology, as wel as Urban and Youth Languages. A published poet and playwright, Oloruntoba‐Oju is also a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and of the University of Edinburgh. He has also been a study fellow of the British Council, a George Forster fellow and a research fellow of the Nordic Africa Institute.

Fúnmi Olúbọ̀dé-Sàwẹ̀ is a Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Technology, Akure Nigeria and has taught English for Academic Purposes for nearly 30 years. Her PhD in Linguistics was earned working on Yorùbá building terminology development. Her research interests include pragmatics (metaphors and Yorùbá proverbs), terminology development and translation, and computer-mediated communication. Her publications include ‘Metaphor: the imaginative function in scientific discourse.’ (2003), ‘Interpreting Yoruba Proverbs: Some Hearer Strategies’ (2009), ‘Digital Communication in Indigenous Languages’ (2010), ‘Some Semiotic Principles in Yoruba Scriptural Translation (2012), ‘Sources of Complexity in the Yoruba Numeral System’ and ‘Strategies of Composition in Yoruba Plant Nomenclature’ (2013) Negotiating Politeness in SMS Text Messages of Yoruba-English Bilinguals’ (2014), ‘Term Creation Methods in Yoruba Scriptural Translation’ (2015), ‘Metaphors in Medical Terminology and Implications for Terminology Development’ (with Inya O, 2016), Tone Mark Restoration in Standard Yorùbá Text: A Proposal.(with 3 others) and ‘More than a Joking Matter: Humour and Political Commentary in Buni TV’s “Ogas at the Top” Series.’ (2018). Her translation of Guide for the Field Training of Cassava Farmers, Atọ́nisọ́nà fún ètò Ìdánilẹ́kọ̀ọ́ Lórí-oko fún àwọn Àgbẹ̀ Ẹlẹ́gẹ̀ẹ́ is in press.

Oladipupo Oyeleye is a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds Masters degrees in English and Afro-American Studies from the University of Ibadan and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Oladipupo’s research interests are in Contemporary Anglophone Literatures, Post-2000 African popular music, and African digital rhetoric. His dissertation focuses on Afropolitanism as a theory of reading Global Africa. He studies the influence of the African novel and popular music on the global exchange of culture and capital. Oladipupo has contributed to blogs, academic journals, and book chapters in edited volumes. Oladipupo works at the Center for the Humanities as the Program Coordinator for Humanities Exchange-Undergraduate (HEX-U) program.

Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith is a recently retired full Professor of English, Humanities and Women’s Studies in the Goodrich Scholarship Program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, she taught English Composition, Women & Gender Studies and Humanities courses for over three decades. Smith holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington. Her commitment to the preservation of Yoruba language and culture began as early as 1975 when she undertook the English translation of Yoruba writer D. O. Fagunwa’s Igbo Olodumare (The Forest of the Almighty), the second and best-known of the five major Fagunwa novels, as the basis for her Ph.D. dissertation. Her research interests and numerous publications are in the areas of translation studies and Yorùbá Language and Literature. Professor Smith’s publications include a co-edited book of essays (with Daniel Kunene), Tongue and Mother Tongue: African Literature and the Perpetual Search for Identity (2002), four English translations from the Yoruba: Efunsetan Aniwura, Iyalode Ibadan & Olu Omo Tinuubu, Iyalode Egba (2004) and Treasury of Childhood Memories (2016) by Akinwumi Isola, and The Freedom Fight (2010) by Adebayo Faleti, the two leading contemporary Yoruba writers. Smith has won numerous research and teaching awards, among them UNO’s prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award. A detailed list of her publications and academic interests and involvement is listed in http://Digitalmeasures.unomaha.edu.

Molara Wood is a creative writer, journalist and critic, who has been described as “one of the eminent voices in the Arts in Nigeria”. Her short stories, flash fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including African Literature Today, Chimurenga, Farafina Magazine, Sentinel Poetry, DrumVoices Revue, Sable LitMag, Eclectica Magazine, The New Gong Book of New Nigerian Short Stories (ed. Adewale Maja-Pearce, 2007), and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories (ed. Chris Brazier; New Internationalist, 2009). She is currently based in Lagos.