Wale Adebanwi, a Guggenheim Fellow, is a Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Political Science. Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, he was, at various times, an assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, University of California, Davis, USA, and University of Oxford, UK. At the University of Oxford, he was the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations, Director of the African Studies Center (2017 and 2020), and Governing Board Fellow at St Antony’s College (2017 and 2021). He was a Visiting Professor at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, and is currently a Senior Research Associate at the African Studies Center, University of Oxford.
His research and teaching interests are in the broad area of the social mobilization of power and interests in Africa as manifested in and/or through ethnicity, nationalism, racial and urban formations, elites, state and civil society, media, intellectual history, and social theory. His research focuses primarily on Nigeria and South Africa. He was a co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies and AFRICA: Journal of the International Africa Institute.
Professor Adebanwi received his BSc in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, MSc in Political Science from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Ibadan, and MPhil and Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, UK. He studied at Cambridge as a Bill and Melinda Gates Scholar.
- Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Race
- Elites
- State and civil society
- Youth and Urban formations
- Intellectual History
- Social Theory
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Oil to Diamonds: The Political Economy of Natural Resources in Africa
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The Politics of Everyday Life in Africa
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Introduction to Africa
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Popular Culture and Youth in Africa
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Political Economy and Social History of Africa and the African Diaspora
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Regional Analysis: Politics, Markets, and States (Africa)
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The State, Civil Society, and Democracy in Africa
Adebanwi’s sole-authored monographs include Authority Stealing: Anti-Corruption War and Democratic Politics in Post-Military Nigeria (Carolina Academic Press, 2011), Yorùbá Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obáfémi Awólówò and Corporate Agency (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning (University of Rochester Press, 2016), and How to Become a Big Man in Africa: Subalternity, Elites, and Ethnic Politics in Contemporary Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2024). He is the (co-)editor of several books, including Democracy and Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Governance, Political Economy, and Party Politics, 1999-2023 (James Currey Publishers, 2023), Everyday State and Democracy in Africa: Ethnographic Encounters (Ohio University Press, 2022), and Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa (University of Michigan Press, 2021).
His scholarly articles have appeared in Theory, Culture and Society, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journal of Historical Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Citizenship Studies, Democratization, African Affairs, Journal of Modern African Studies, AFRICA: Journal of the International Africa Institute, and Review of African Political Economy.
He has been awarded grants and fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Macarthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).