Dr. Felix Oludare Ajiola

I am an award-wining development and economic historian, and sociocultural anthropologist in the Department of History and Strategic Studies at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. I am an early career academic with strong capability, potential, and passion for original, inter-disciplinary research and scholarship in African history, political economy and urban studies.

My research transcends boundaries and seamlessly moves between multiple fields in humanities, social sciences and environmental sciences. My scholarship sits at the crossroads of social history, economic history, cultural anthropology, political economy and development studies. My interest lies in the contradictions, complexities and compelling ways that locality and globalism, traditions and modernity, are reified in African social and economic discourses, focusing on the impact of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, capitalism and globalization on the African development and environment. I have had a decade of teaching experience at the University of Lagos. My teaching focuses on development and its intersection with various subjects such as African History {since precolonial era}, African political economy {colonialism and post colonialism}, social and cultural issues, environmental history and urban Studies

My ongoing interdisciplinary research project on ‘‘Slavery, European modernity and the Ebi system’’ seeks to examine how historical processes—namely the trans-Atlantic slave trade and subsequent colonialism—disrupted indigenous Yoruba kinship systems (Ebi). It will highlight how colonial interventions and the slave trade not only transformed economic and social structures in Lagos but also marginalized the roles of women within these systems. It will seek to understand how, despite these disruptions, remnants of traditional communal solidarity (embodied in the Ebi system) continue to influence social cohesion and identity in contemporary Yoruba society.

My most recent researches transverses methodological and ethical questions on the use of ethnography and historical approaches in African studies. My works has been published in many reputable journals and edited volumes, and grants from prestigious institutions have supported my research. I am an active member of African Studies Association (ASA-UK), Fellow of the Lagos Studies Association (LSA) and member of the Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN).