Toyin Omoyeni Falola (born 1 January 1953) is a Nigerian historian and professor of African Studies. Falola is a Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria and of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, and has served as the president of the African Studies Association. He is currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin.

Biography

Early life and education

Falola was born on 1 January 1953, in Ibadan, Nigeria. He earned his B.A. and Ph.D. in History (1981) at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), in Nigeria. In December 2020, he earned an academic D.Litt. in Humanities from the University of Ibadan.

Academic career

Falola began his academic career as a schoolteacher in Pahayi, Ogun State, in 1970, and by 1981 he was a lecturer at the University of Ife. He joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1991, and has also held short-term teaching appointments at the University of Cambridge in England, York University in Canada, Smith College, Massachusetts, in the United States, The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, and the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, Nigeria.

Research and pedagogy

The primary focus of Falola's research is African history since the 19th century, in the tradition of the Ibadan School. His geographic areas of interest include Africa, Latin America and the United States; and his thematic fields include Atlantic history, diaspora and migration, empire and globalization, intellectual history, international relations, religion and culture. Falola is the author and editor of more than one hundred books, as well as the general editor of the Cambria African Studies Series (Cambria Press). Recent courses he has taught include "Introduction to Traditional Africa", an interdisciplinary course on the peoples and cultures of Africa, designed for students with varied backgrounds in African Studies, and "Epistemologies of African/Black Studies", a course on the rise and evolution of African/Black Studies, with a focus on pedagogy, methodology, and the historical development of scholarship in the field.

Academic honours and awards

Falola has received honorary doctorates, lifetime career awards and honors in various parts of the world, including: Falola served as the president of the African Studies Association in 2014 and 2015.

Books

TOFAC

In Nigeria, there is a conference named after Toyin Falola by the Ibadan Cultural Studies Group; a group chaired by Professor Ademola Dasylva. The first Toyin Falola International Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora (TOFAC) was held in 2011 at the University of Ibadan. The second was hosted in Lagos by the Centre for Black African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC) under the watch of the director general of the centre Professor Tunde Babawale.

Additional reading