2018 has been another great year for our students, with several of them emerging winners of keenly contested international awards.

In April, Omotayo Modupeola Olakojo of our Cultural and Media Studies unit won the African Humanities Programme (AHP) dissertation completion fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), an award sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation. As a Carnegie Fellow, she has also been invited to attend the African Studies Association (ASA) 2018 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, this November to present a paper on her ongoing research on ‘Intertextuality in Selected Blogs’.

Omotayo Modupeola Olakojo

Chibuzor Azubuike, an MA student of Diaspora and Transnational Studies, received the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Young African Scholar Award for 2017/2018. The grant is for her MA fieldwork on ‘Negotiating Homeland and Return among Female Bakassi Refugees in Cross River State’. The grant also included participation in a cohort workshop in Maputo, Mozambique, in 2017. Her participation in the conference of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom (ASA-UK) that held in September 2018 was made possible the Harry Guggenheim grant. As a Mandela Washington Fellow, Azubuike received funding to attend the International Young Water Professionals Conference held in Cape Town, South Africa. She was a BIARI Fellow at Brown University Institute for Advanced Research, USA, in June 2018.

 Chibuzor Azubuike

Temitato Olofinlua, who is on our doctoral programme in Cultural and Media Studies, won a travel fellowship to participate in the Writing Workshop for Early-Career Scholars of African Literary and Cultural Studies that held in Kampala, Uganda, August 15 to 18. The workshop was organized by Arts Managers and Literary Activists (AMLA), University of Exeter, University of Bristol, and sponsored by the British Academy. Olofinlua’s work will be published in the journal East African Literary and Cultural Studies.

 

 Temitato Olofinlua

Bamidele Inioluwa Olufolahan, an MA student in our Gender Studies programme, presented a paper on ‘Marginalizing the LGBTQ in a Sexualized Yoruba Society’ at the ‘Intersecting African, Queer and Religious Studies’ meeting at the Balme Library of the University of Ghana, Legon, on 20 to 21 September. She received a partial travel fellowship from the University of Ghana for participation.

 Bamidele Inioluwa Olufolahan

Oluwabukola Adebowale, an MA student in our Diaspora and Transnational Studies unit, won a travel grant awarded by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), the Netherlands, to attend the 2018 edition of the Africa-Asia conference at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from 20 to 22 September. Her conference paper was titled ‘Costuming in Nollywood-Igbo Movies: The Asian Influx’.

Oluwabukola Adebowale

Gogo Porokie, an MA graduate of our Diaspora and Transnational Studies programme, also won the IIAS travel fellowship for his paper on ‘The Lagos Confucius Institute and Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in Nigeria’.

 Gogo Porokie

Fadekemi Olawoye, who is pursuing the doctorate in Cultural and Media Studies, won the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) travel fellowship to participate in the 15th General Assembly of the Council, taking place in Dakar, Senegal, from 17 to 21 December. Her conference paper is on the topic ‘The African Woman and Make-up Art: Cosmetic Face in the Era of Globalization’.

 Fadekemi Olawoye

Oluwasegun Ajetunmobi of our Diaspora and Transnational Studies unit has been selected to take part in the YALI-RLC programme. The workshop will hold in Accra, Ghana, from 5 to 26 November, 2018. The grant covers travel, accommodation, and other expenses.

Cynthia Olufade of our Diaspora and Transnational Studies programme is the 2018 winner of the Africa Thesis Award offered by the African Studies Centre Leiden, the Netherlands, with her MA thesis on ‘Oath Taking and the Transnationalism of Silence among Edo Female Sex Workers in Italy’. Presented annually to a student whose Master’s thesis has been completed on the basis of research conducted in Africa, the award consists of a prize of €500 and publication of the winning thesis in the ASCL’s African Studies Collection.

Cynthia Olufade

And we are glad to announce that Deborah Oluwafunminiola Adeojo, a PhD candidate in our Gender Studies programme, has won the African Doctoral Academy (ADA) fellowship sponsored by the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. The award grants her admission into the Summer School that will take place at Stellenbosch from 3 to 18 January, 2019.

Deborah Oluwafunminiola Adeojo