Abidemi Babatunde Babalola

Abidemi Babatunde Babalola is a Nigerian archaeologist. He is the lead archaeologist for the Museum of West African Art and a research fellow at the British Museum. He has received a number of awards for his work, leading up to the Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University in 2025.

Education Babalola studied in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, where he earned a bachelor's degree and master's degree. He went on to study at Rice University in Houston, Texas, earning a second master's degree, and a doctor of philosophy in anthropological archaeology.

Career

Babalola works at the British Museum as an anthropological archaeologist. He works with material science to research the "history of technological development in premodern West Africa". He is the lead archaeologist for the Museum of West African Art's Archaeology Project in Benin City, Nigeria.

His research, based on work in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, has shown that West African glass production had been developed centuries before European colonialism, challenging prior notions about the history of African technology.

Publications

Semi-finished glass from Ile-Ife, Nigeria: implications for the archaeology of glass in sub-Saharan Africa Digitization of glass bead-making, use and meaning in Ile-Ife, Southwestern Nigeria