Black Scholar From the University of California, Davis Is Heading to Oxford

Wale Adebanwi, an associate professor of African American and African studies at the University of California, Davis, will be leaving his post at the end of the academic year to assume the Rhodes Professorship in Race Relations in the School of African and Interdisciplinary Area Studies at Oxford University. The endowed professorship was established in 1954 by the Rhodesian Selection Trust Mining Company to honor Cecil Rhodes, the former prime minister of the Cape Colony.

Dr. Adebanwi will be the fourth Rhodes Professor and the first Black scholar to hold the endowed chair. He will assume his new position on July 1. He will also serve as a Fellow of St. Anthony’s College at Oxford.

Professor Adebanwi is a native of Nigeria. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge in England. Dr. Adebanwi is the author of several books including his most recent effort Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning (University of Rochester Press, 2016).