Akinwumi Ogundiran

Akinwumi Ogundiran (born 1966) is the Cardiss Collins Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History at Northwestern University. He is an archaeologist, anthropologist, and cultural historian, whose research focuses on the Yoruba world of western Africa, Atlantic Africa, and the African Diaspora. He was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and migrated to the United States in 1993. He was Chancellor's Professor and Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology & History at UNC Charlotte.

Education Ogundiran earned BA, First Class Honors from Obafemi Awolowo University in 1988, followed by an MSc from the University of Ibadan in 1991. In 2000, he completed his PhD at Boston University.

Career Ogundiran worked as a newsroom editor at the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (Nigeria) in 1991. He began his pre-doctoral teaching career in Nigeria at Delta State University and the University of Benin. His post-doctoral teaching took off in the Department of History at Florida International University, Miami. Between 2003 and 2011, he directed the Upper Osun Archaeological and Historical Project that investigates the cultural history of Atlantic Africa as experienced in the hinterlands of the Yoruba world, and the landscape history of the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove. Most recently, he has been directing the Archaeology of Old Oyo Metropolis studying the political economy and social ecology of the Oyo Empire (1570-1836). His research has been funded by the National Humanities Center, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, National Geographic, among others. In spring 2018, he was a Yip Fellow at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. in 2019-2023, and President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, 2023-25.

Selected publications Archaeology and History in Ilare District, 1200-1900 (Cambridge Monograph in African Archaeology 55, 2002) Precolonial Nigeria (Africa World Press, 2005) Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2007) Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Crises of Culture and Consciousness in the Postcolony: What is the future for Nigeria? (Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, 2012). Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic (Indiana University Press, 2014) The Yoruba: A New History (Indiana University Press, 2020)