This paper is dedicated to reinterrogating and conveying knowledge of African historiography, its application, and practical experience over time. How do the sources of history beyond the colonial archives help frame and recover the African past? African history and historiography have been stimulating research areas since the mid-20th century. The approach has spread more widely and deeply than envisaged by its originators. The contributions of the Ibadan School of History to this approach have proved significant and remarkable. Since then, African and Africanist scholars have been interested in applying distinctively African historiographical approaches to analysing the African past in its interlocking dimensions. But this has thrown up further challenges that must now be understood in the context of more integrated approaches, growing overlaps, and the new conventions advanced by new research and intellectual imperatives.

Olutayo Charles Adesina 

Olutayo Charles Adesina is a professor of history in the Department of History, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and the current British Academy Global Professor of History affiliated with the Department of History, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, United Kingdom. A distinguished Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (FNAL), the apex organisation of humanistic scholars in Nigeria, Prof Adesina has taught for over three decades at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. An alumnus of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Prof Adesina’s work was selected in 2024 as one of the eight proposals for the 2023/2024 British Academy Global Professorship Award. This was for his research proposal entitled 'The Town and Gown Interface: Ibadan and the Decolonisation of Social Knowledge in the 20th Century.' The project offers an innovative study of the politics of knowledge production and epistemic foundations in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

Before his current award, Prof. Adesina’s scholarship has been internationally recognized through fellowships, awards, and professional offices. In 1994, he was a Grantee of the United States Information Agency at the Boston College, Massachusetts, U.S.A.; Fellow, Atlantic History Seminar, Charles Warren Center, Harvard University (1998), U.S.A.; Fellow, Salzburg Seminar, Austria (2003); Visiting Professor at Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia, U.S.A. (2004 & 2013); African Visiting Fellow, Rhodes Chair of Race Relations, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, United Kingdom (2004/2005); Visiting Research Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India (2009); and, Fellow, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, Germany, May-July 2023.

Prof. Adesina’s publications include: “A Terrain…Angels Would Fear to Tread”: Biographies and History in Nigeria”, Southern Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 45 No. 1, June 2020; Oyo: History, Tradition and Royalty. Essays in Honour of His Imperial Majesty the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba (Dr.) Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III. Ibadan, Ibadan University Press, 2021. 201pp (co-edited with Siyan Oyeweso); Adesina, O.C. (With Martin Gutman), “SDG 9 – Historicizing Production, Innovation, and Infrastructure, from the Industrial Revolution to Contemporary African Strategies of Industrialization.” In Martin Gutman and Daniel Gorman (eds), Before the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals: A Historical Companion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 265-294; Adesina, O.C. (with A. G. Adebayo) “Contextualising Segun Osoba’s Newspaper Columns, Interviews and Letters.” in Segun Osoba, Selected Writings in Defence of Human Rights, Social Justice and Equity, Ibadan, John Archers, (Publishers) Ltd., 2023. His most current publication is Adebayo A.G. and Adesina, O.C. (eds), Critical and Contentious Issues in the Modern and Contemporary History of Nigeria: Collected Writings of Samuel Olusegun Osoba, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 2024. Prof. Adesina is the current Editor of Africa Review; an interdisciplinary academic journal of the African Studies Association of India published by Brill, The Netherlands.