The Institute of African Studies (IAS) is pleased to announce that Professor Pius Adesanmi is now its new Director. Professor Adesanmi succeeds Professor Blair Rutherford, who served two terms as Director and now is pleased to continue to be active in the IAS as like the nearly fifty Carleton professors who are cross-appointed to it.
Professor Pius Adesanmi obtained a First Class Honours degree in French Studies from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, a masters degree in French Studies from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and a PhD in French Studies from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is a specialist of Francophone and Anglophone African and Black Diasporic literatures, politics, and cultures, an area in which he has published extensively. One of Nigeria’s contemporary leading public intellectuals and celebrated columnists, Adesanmi’s portfolio of more than thirty keynote lectures in the last five years includes appearances on such prestigious platforms as the Stanford Forum for African Studies, the Africa Talks Series of the London School of Economics, the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation’s annual lecture series, the Vanderbilt History Seminar, the International Leadership Platform of the University of Johannesburg, the African Unity for Renaissance Series of the Africa Institute of South Africa, and the annual talk series of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Professor Adesanmi was a member of the Diaspora Consultation series of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 in New York. In 2013-2014, he was a Carnegie Diaspora Visiting Professor of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, where he designed the African Thinkers’ Program of UG-Ghana’s Institute of African Studies. He has since remained an annual facilitator of seminars at the University of Ghana’s Pan-African Doctoral Academy. He is a foundation faculty member of the Abiola Irele School of Theory and Criticism at Kwara State University, Nigeria. Adesanmi is the internationally-acclaimed winner of the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing (2010) in the non-fiction category with his book, You’re not a Country, Africa. His latest book, Naija No Dey Carry Last: Thoughts on a Nation in Progress, a collection of essays on Nigerian politics and culture, recently featured on Channels Book Club’s best Nigerian Books of 2015.