Ademola O. Dasylva is a Professor of African and Oral literatures, a poet, biographer, literary theorist and critic; Coordinator, Ibadan Cultural Studies Group, (a study group for the promotion of excellence in African and African American cultural studies); convener, 2008 Ibadan International Conference on African Literature (IICAL); Convener of The Toyin Falola Annual International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora (TOFAC); Fellow, Salzburg Seminar, Session 374, Austria, 2000. Prof. Dasylva is a native of Ado-Ekiti (Aduloju family), Ekiti State. Prof. Dasylva had his B.A. Hons, (English) and M.A. (African Literature) from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) Ile-Ife; and Ph.D in African Literature, from Nigeria’s premier University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He teaches Drama, Poetry, the African Novel, and Oral Literature/Folklore Studies at the Department of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Between 2009 and 2012 Prof Dasylva successfully coordinated the University of Ibadan Museum Development Programme (a MacArthur/UI funded project). As Director of General Studies Programme of the University of Ibadan between January 2010 and September 2012, Prof Dasylva was the Principal Investigator (PI) of the E-Class project between 2011 and 2012 (a project funded by ETI/PHEA, South Africa). He was pioneer winner, University of Ibadan Award of Excellence for Community Development 2012. He is the only African on Advisory Board, International Association of Epic Studies, Beijing, China.
Prof Dasylva is a great enthusiast of global scholarly linkages. His scholarly publications include, Understanding Wole Soyinka: Death and the King’s Horseman; Studies in Drama; Classificatory Paradigms in African Oral Narrative (a monograph), co-author (with Dr. Toyin Jegede), Studies in Poetry. His collection of poems, Songs of Odamolugbe won the 2006 ANA/Cadbury National Award for Poetry. In March 2009, at the Africa Conference, Professor Ademola Dasylva won the 2009 Distinguished Africanist Award for Research Excellence, University of Texas at Austin, USA. He is well traveled and widely published in local and international scholarly journals and books.
Kenneth Harrow is Distinguished Professor of English at Michigan State University. He received a B.S. from M.I.T., a Master’s in English from NYU and a Ph D in Comparative Literature also from NYU. His work focuses on African cinema and literature, Diaspora and Postcolonial Studies. He is the author of Thresholds of Change in African Literature (Heinemann, 1994), Less Than One and Double: A Feminist Reading of African Women’s Writing (Heinemann, 2002), and Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (Indiana U P, 2007). His latest work Trash! A Study of African Cinema Viewed from Below, was published by Indiana University Press in 2013. He has edited numerous collections on such topics as Islam and African literature, African cinema, and women in African literature and cinema. He has published more than 50 articles and a dozen chapters. He has organized numerous conferences dealing with African literature and cinema. He served as President of the African Literature Association, and was honored with their first Distinguished Member Award in 2009. He has also been honored with the Distinguished Faculty Award at Michigan State University. He was an NEH Younger Humanist Award recipient in 1973-4, which brought him to France, Algeria, and Morocco. His Fulbright teaching and research awards brought him to Cameroon in 1977-79, and Senegal from 1982-3 and 2005-6.
He has served on the board for the African Studies Association, and currently is an editor of the African Studies Review. Since 2013 he has organizing film showings at the ASA conferences, and has organized the film video exhibitions.
Paul Lovejoy is Distinguished Research Professor, Department of History, York University, and holds the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples, and formerly a member of the UNESCO “Slave Route” Project (Section du dialogue interculturel). He is Editor of the Harriet Tubman Series on the African Diaspora for Africa World Press, and has been awarded an Honorary Degree, Doctor of the University, University of Stirling in 2007, the President’s Research Award of Merit at York University in 2009, the Distinguished Africanist Award by the University of Texas at Austin in 2010, the Life Time Achievement Award in 2011 from the Canadian Association of African Studies, and the Teaching Award from the Faculty of Graduate Studies, York University in 2012.
Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1974 and specializes in the study of African history and politics. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, and the history and theory of human rights. Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, Mamdani was a professor at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania (1973-79), Makerere University in Uganda (1980-1993), and the University of Cape Town (1996-1999). He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including being listed as one of the ‘Top 20 Public Intellectuals’ by Foreign Policy (US) and Prospect (UK) magazine in 2008. From 1998 to 2002 he served as President of CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa). His essays have appeared in the New Left Review and the London Review of books, among other journals.
Funmi Olanisakin is the founding Director of the African Leadership Centre (ALC), which aims to build the next generation of African scholars and analysts generating cutting edge knowledge for conflict, security and development in Africa. The ALC is based in Nairobi, Kenya and at King’s College London. Professor Olonisakin managed the ALC in both sites from 2010 to 2014. She is Professor of Security, Leadership and Development in the School of Global Affairs, King’s College London and a Research Associate with the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, South Africa, where she was appointed in 2013 as a Mellon Foundation Distinguished Scholar on Peace and Conflict. The Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) also appointed Dr Olonisakin as a Distinguished Fellow in April 2014.
Trained in Political Science (Bsc. Ife, Nigeria) and War Studies (PhD, King’s College London), Olonisakin has positioned her work to serve as a bridge between academia and the world of policy and practice. Her academic research and writing has contributed to strategic thinking in post-conflict contexts and in the work of regional organizations such as ECOWAS and the African Union.
Kwesi Kwaa Prah is an African sociologist and anthropologist. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) in Cape Town, South Africa, and he has worked in a number of universities in Africa, Europe and Asia researching and teaching Sociology and Anthropology. Professor Prah has been involved with numerous European and African organizations, from the Ghana National Students Organization in the 1960s (for which he held a seat at the IUS, Prague) to the Organization of the 7th Pan-African Congress, Kampala in 1995 and the 8th Pan-African Congress in Johannesburg in 2014. His reputation is strikingly Pan-Africanist and international: he is well known across the Pan-Africanist world for his participation in various conferences and the themes covered by his mature scholarship. Representative of his accomplishments, he was awarded the Kwame Nkrumah Award for Service to Pan-Africanism in 2015, which is awarded to a scholar, administrator or politician who has contributed to the realization of the vision of African unity and development. He has also been awarded the Commander of the National Order of the Ivory Coast in 2010; D.Litt. Honorary Degree by the University of the West Indies, Barbados in 2011; and the CL Engelbrecht Prize by Die Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns in 2012.
Ebrima Sall is the Executive Secretary of CODESRIA. Before his appointment as Executive Secretary, CODESRIA in April 2009, Dr Sall was Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) in Uppsala (Sweden) and Director of the Centre for the Promotion of Village Savings and Credit Associations (VISAC) Gambia. He also taught at the University Gaston Berger of Saint-Louis (UGB) in Senegal for five years. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (France), was promoted ‘Maitre de Conférences/Senior lecturer in “Sociology-Demography” by the French National Universities Council (CNU) in 1992. He is also a beneficiary of the post-doctoral fellowship of the Yale University Programme in Agrarian Studies.
Before assuming the duties of Executive Secretary Dr Sall, successively, was the Programmes Officer in charge of the Academic Freedom and Child & Youth & Conflict Programme, Senior Programme Administrator, Research Programme Officer and Head of Research Programme. His most recent publications include the following books: Human Rights and the Dilemmas of Democracy in Africa (co-edited with Lennart Wohlgemuth), Citizenship and Violence in Cote d’Ivoire (co-edited with Jean-Bernard Ouedraogo) and Women in Higher education: Gender and Academic Freedom in Africa and the Social sciences in Africa. Dr Ebrima Sall is Gambian.
Bridget A. Teboh is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. She holds an M.A. in African Area Studies and a Ph.D. in African History from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). She received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Cameroon, Yaounde, a DUEF (Diplome d’Université d’Etudes Francais) from Université Jean-Moulin, Lyon III, France. She specializes in African History, African-American Women’s History, Women’s and Gender studies, African Diaspora and oral history. Her research interests are colonialism, post-coloniality, historical biography, African Diaspora, women’s ikah [power], and historical ethnography. In 1996 and 1998, Dr. Teboh served as a Ford Foundation and ISOP (International Studies and Overseas Program) Scholar-in-Residence and Research Affiliate of the University of Cameroon, Yaounde.
She has contributed scholarly works and book chapters on topics as diverse as African history and culture, historical methods, African feminism, gender and sexuality and economic development. She co-edited with Toyin Falola, Power of Gender: the Gender of Power: Women’s Labor, Rights and Responsibility in Africa (Africa World Press, 2013). Other latest titles include, “A Tiwara Tribute for Nelson Mandela,” in Toyin Falola (ed.) Iconic Tributes to Nelson Mandela. ((Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2014); “Gender and Jobs in the Making of a Colonial Economy,” in Nana Amponsah (editor), Beyond the Boundaries: Toyin Falola and the Art of Genre-Bending (2013), “Gender and Globalization in Africa,” in Mbah, Emmanuel and Salm, Steven J. (editors), Globalization and Changing Trends in Modern African History (Carolina Academic Press, 2012); and “Motherhood, Women’s Body and ‘Eating Well’: Pregnancy, A Metaphor of Life in the Cameroon Grassfields,” in Toyin Falola and Nana Akua Amponsah (editors), Women, Gender and Sexualities in Africa, (2012).
Dr. Teboh’s book, Unruly Mothers, Combative Wives: Rituals, Women and Change in the Cameroon Grassfields c. 1889-1960, a study of British colonialism in West Cameroon in the late19th and early 20th Centuries is forthcoming. She is presently completing a historical biography, Herstory: The Life and Times of “Madame Maternity,” an extraordinary African woman, political/religious icon and health worker.