Aderemi RAJI-OYELADE

 Professor Aderemi Raji-Oyelade: A Profile

 Aderemi Raji-Oyelade is an award-winning poet and professor of Africana literature, creative writing and cultural studies. He is a member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and Distinguished Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors. He joined the Department of English officially as a Lecturer II in 1995 and became Professor in 2007.

 Raji-Oyelade has served in different administrative capacities either as member, chair or facilitator of academic and literary programmes within the University of Ibadan and other institutions in Nigeria and abroad. He served as the Sub-Dean General, Faculty of Arts (1997-1999); Sub-Dean, Postgraduate (2003-2004); member, University Postgraduate Sub-Committee on Guidelines for Writing Doctoral Theses (2003), and later Chairman, Working Committee on the Production of the University Manual of Style for UI Scholars (2003-2004); Acting Head, Department of English (2009-2011); substantive Head of Department (2011-2012); Chairman, Faculty of Arts ICT Committee (2010-2012); Dean of Arts (2012-2015); the University of Ibadan Public Orator (2011-2015); Resource Person for both the University of Ibadan Research Foundation (2011 till date) and the MacArthur Foundation (2016); and member of the University Governing Council (2019 till date).

As Dean of Arts, Prof. Raji-Oyelade introduced a series of innovative programmes and supervised a number of municipal projects through self-help geared towards achieving a conducive learning and teaching environment that inspires other developments within the university.

In 2017, Professor Raji-Oyelade was appointed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to serve on the panel of experts for the establishment of the Maria Sibylla International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is a member of AGNES, the African-German Network of Excellence in Science.

Raji-Oyelade has been a multiple winner of literary and academic prizes, including the ANA/Cadbury Prize (Nigeria), the Ford Foundation Research Grant (USA), the West African Research Council Prize (West Africa), and the Harry Oppenheimer Award (South Africa). He is winner of the Humboldt University Talent Travel Award, the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt 2017 Alumni Award for Innovative Networking Initiatives, and the 2018 recipient of the European Commission's Erasmus+ Staff Mobility for Teaching Award. Prof. Raji-Oyelade’s interest in mentorship programmes and grants proposal writing strategies for scholars and institutions inspired the establishment of a virtual bootcamp for capacity building across disciplines, referred to as S.C.O.R.E, an acronym for Scholarship, Conferences and Opportunities for Researchers and Experts.

Prof. Raji-Oyelade teaches Literature of the African Diaspora and Creative Writing, and Literature and the New Media in the Department of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is currently the coordinator of a multi-site, pan-African research project on the theory and practices of postproverbials in seven African countries.