Karin Barber

Dame Karin Judith Barber, (born 2 July 1949) is a British cultural anthropologist and academic, who specialises in the Yoruba-speaking area of Nigeria. From 1999 to 2017, she was Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Before joining the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham, she was a lecturer at the University of Ife in Nigeria. From 2018 to 2021, she was the Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE). In retirement, she is an emeritus professor at Birmingham and a visiting professor at LSE.

Barber has written two introductory textbooks for the Yoruba language, and a number of books concerning Yoruba culture, and oral literature and written literature in Africa. She has been awarded a number of prizes for her publications, and has been recognised by her peers and the British government for her contributions to scholarship.

Early life and education Barber was born on 2 July 1949 to Charles and Barbara Barber. She was educated at Lawnswood High School, an all-girls state grammar school in Lawnswood, Leeds. Her research concerned the "role of oral poetic performance in everyday life" in Okuku, Osun State, Nigeria. In 1985, she moved back to the United Kingdom and joined the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham. In 2018, she was appointed Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She retired in 2021, and continued her associated with LSE as a visiting professor.

In addition to her full-time academic positions, Barber has held a number of visiting appointments. For the 1993/1994 academic year she was Preceptor of the Institute of Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University in Illinois, United States. In 2014, she was the Mellon Foundation Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Honours In 2003, Barber was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to African studies and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to the study of African culture.

In 1991, Barber was awarded the "Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology" by the Royal Anthropological Institute for I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town, her first book. In 2001, she was awarded the "Melville J. Herskovits Award" by the African Studies Association for The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theatre. In 2009, she was awarded the "Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form" by the Media Ecology Association for The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics. In 2013, she was awarded the "Paul Hair Prize" by the African Studies Association for Print Culture and the First Yoruba Novel.

Selected works