Oladele Olatunde LAYIWOLA

 Profile of Professor Oladele Olatunde Layiwola

Professor Oladele Olatunde Layiwola is a two-time Director of African Studies at the University of Ibadan, in Nigeria, and a former Director of the University Media Centre.

He obtained an honours degree in English from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Nigeria in1981, and won a Commonwealth Scholarship to study for a Ph.D in Theatre Studies at the School of English, University of Leeds, UK from 1983 -1986. On his return to Nigeria he joined the University of Ibadan where, on account of his versatility, he has taught across five departments - African Studies, English, Communication & Language Arts, Theatre Arts and Centre for Sustainable Development. He became a full Professor at Ibadan in 1998.

Professor Layiwola has served on most major committees of the University Senate, and has served on the Governing Council of the University from year 2003 - 2007.

In 1995, he was a visiting fellow at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, UK on an Association of Commonwealth Universities Development (ACU) Fellowship. In 1996, he was a visiting scholar at Queens University of Belfast, Armagh Campus, also in the UK, where he was privileged to organize the first International Post-colonial Conference. In 1999, he was visiting fellow at the African Humanities Institute, University of Ghana, Legon and at the Center for the Advanced Study of African Societies, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA. From 1984 - 2001, he was Executive Committee member and Nigerian Representative, International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature (IASAIL). From 1989 - 2001, he was editor of African Notes, the international Journal of the Institute of African Studies; he served as Judge for the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Book Awards in 1991 and 1992; served as Editorial Board Member of The News, Lagos from 1993 -1995; he was Hon. Secretary of the Nigerian Field Society (Founded in1930) from 1997 - 2001;. Layiwola has published in such journals as: Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (U of Kansas); New Hibernia Review(U of St. Thomas, Minnesota); Ufahamu(UCLA); Asian and African Studies (Slovak Academy of Arts and Sciences); West African Journal of Archaeology; ODU: A Journal of West African Studies; Nigerian Field; Nigerian Forum; Africa and World Literature; African Notes; African Theatre (UK); African Study Monographs (Kyoto, Japan); Art History Journal (UK) and such on-line journals as Critical Stages and H-Net. Some of his recent publications are an edited book on Ibadan titled: The City-State of Ibadan: Texts and Contexts (2015); a book chapter on “Daniel Fagunwa and Yoruba Oral Tradition” (2017); “Revisiting Language in Two Wole Soyinka Plays” in Critical Stages/ Scenes Critiques (2017); “Tradition, Hegemony, and the Crises of Africa’s Academies” on H-Net (May, 2017). During the first half of 2017 he has delivered plenary papers at two international conferences at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and at the University of West Indies, Jamaica. The Philosophical lecture “Culture and the Burden of Being and Development in Africa.” appeared in Philosophy and Culture; Interrogating the Nexus (Salvador, Brazil, 2020).

 In 2012, Professor Layiwola was elected to the Fellowship of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL), the apex academy for the humanities in Nigeria. He served as the General Secretary of the Academy from 2012 – 2014 and had also served as the public orator of the Academy from 2014 - 2016. In 2018, he gave the Convocation Lecture of the Academy and in 2019 gave an African Studies/CODESRIA collaborative seminar. He serves on the advisory board of at least four international academic journals. He is widely published in his chosen fields of comparative literature, performance and cultural studies, and theatre studies. He has been external examiner and promotion assessor for major universities in Nigeria, Ghana and in Germany. He has supervised fifteen Ph.D theses, with eight others awaiting completion, as well as sixty Master's degree dissertations. Professor Layiwola is an honorary member, Yeats Society of New York; he is President and Chairman of Council, Leonard Cheshire Foundation, Nigeria. He had also served on the board of the UNESCO Centre for African Culture and International Understanding, Osogbo, Osun State. He is a life patron of the Boys and Girls Brigade and a Life Patron of the Nigerian Red Cross. He continues to be a mentor to his students and younger faculty.  He led the group which organized the first international conference of the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) hosted by the University of Ibadan in October, 2015. Professor Dele Layiwola is married to Professor Adepeju Layiwola and they are blessed with both biological and adoptive children.