Akin Ogundiran

Research Interests

Professor Ogundiran has conducted research in Nigeria (West Africa), Ethiopia (East Africa), and the United States. In these countries, he has collaborated (Ethiopia and U.S.A.) and initiated (Nigeria) projects on different aspects of African cultural history stretching as far back as 100 A.D. in the case of Aksumite Civilization in Ethiopia, 1200 A.D. for Yoruba Civilization in West Africa, and as recent as early 19th century in the case of urban African-American communities in Boston (USA).

The cultural history of Yoruba-Edo region in Nigeria has been the main focus of his research since 1990. The major theme of the research is the articulation of local historical experience in regional and global contexts. He is interested in how historical communities, peoples, and cultural ecumenes responded to, manipulated, and became part of regional and global historical processes (e.g, the Atlantic economy). He is also interested in how the cultural institutions and daily lives of African societies have been transformed as a result of these global/regional encounters. Within the framework of global/regional/local intersections, his archaeological-historical research has been drawn to topics such as migrations, inter-group relations, ethnogenesis, political formation, material culture, and origins and transformations of cultural institutions.

He is currently working on a project that focuses on the impact of the Atlantic commerce on social and cultural transformations in the Bight of Benin (West Africa). The project is titled "Cultural Translations of the Atlantic Experience in the Bight of Benin." The outline of an aspect of the research agenda is recently published in International Journal of African Historical Studies (see publications below). Methodologically, the project seeks to integrate political economic analysis with cultural theories, and the data for the study will be drawn from oral and written textual sources, social memory and public rituals, and archaeology. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide insights into the sociocultural transformations that took place in the Bight of Benin between 1500 and 1900 as a result of the integration of the region into the Atlantic economic system. His current research is made possible with grants from the Florida International University's Provost/ FIU Foundation Research Award (2003), Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (2004), and National Endowment for the Humanities (2005-6).
Curriculum Vitae: Link

Books

Archaeology and History in Ilare District (Central Yorubaland, Nigeria), 1200-1900

For more information on Ogundiran, please see his home page http://www.fiu.edu/~ogundira/

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