Nigerian Universities and the Shifting Sense of Belonging by Prof. Adesina

The event will take place on Wednesday, 6th of May 2015 at 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm, at Lady Bank-Anthony Hall.

The general public is cordially invited.

Abstract

This a critique of the Nigerian university experience over time. It takes a close reading of the intellectual and cultural forces that dominated Nigerian universities in the twentieth century and beyond, while at the same time paying significant attention to particularities that ultimately influenced the university idea within the context of contemporary debates of change, diffusion, and exchange of ideas. These have forced a new generation of scholars and commentators to consider the roles played by global, national and local currents in establishing an identitarian framework that have had distinct resonances in contemporary discourse on the university idea in twenty-first century Nigeria.

Bio

Olutayo Charles Adesina, Ph.D., is currently Professor of History at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he teaches undergraduate and Postgraduate courses in the History of Development and, Economic and Social History of West Africa. A Fellow of the Atlantic History Seminar, Charles Warren Center, Harvard University, U.S.A. and, the African Visiting Fellow, Rhodes Chair of Race Relations, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, U.K. (2004/05), Prof. Adesina is currently the Secretary of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL), the apex organization of Nigerian academics and scholars in the Humanities.