Wale Adebanwi

Wale Adebanwi, is the Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA and honorary research associate at the African Studies Centre, Oxford University. Before joining UPenn, Adebanwi was the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at Oxford University and Director of the African Studies Centre at Oxford and Fellow of St. Antony’s College, Oxford; Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies, University of California-Davis, USA; and Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He was a Bill and Melinda Gates Scholar at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, UK, and has degrees in Mass Communication (B. Sc., University of Lagos), Political Science (M. Sc, and Ph. D., University of Ibadan) and Social Anthropology (M. Phil., University of Cambridge, UK).

His sole-authored monographs include The Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning (Rochester, 2016), Yorùbá Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obáfémi Awólówò and Corporate Agency (Cambridge, 2014), Authority Stealing: Anti-Corruption War and Democratic Politics in Post-Military Nigeria (CAP, 2011). He is the (co)editor of ten books including Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Democracy and Governance, Political Economy and Party Politics 1999–2023 (James Currey, 2023), Everyday State and Democracy in Africa: Ethnographic Encounters (Ohio UP, 2022), Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa (Michigan UP, 2021), and Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa: Leadership in Transformation. Interpretations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). He has been a co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies and AFRICA: Journal of the International Africa Institute. His scholarly articles have appeared in Theory, Culture and Society, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journal of Historical Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Citizenship Studies, Democratization, African Affairs, Journal of Modern African Studies, AFRICA: Journal of the International Africa Institute, and Review of African Political Economy.