Boluwatife Akinro
Doctoral Candidate
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Research Associate in Research Group: Concept of Slavery in African History
Room 2.009
Niebuhrstraße 5
D-53113 Bonn
Phone: +49 / (0)228 / 73 62454
boluwatife.akinro@gmail.com

Academic Profile
Concept of Slavery in African History
The aim of my research project is to understand conceptions of servitude in three West African regions with ties to the slave trade: Lagos, Calabar and the area which covers the old Oyo empire. I explore how such conceptions might explain the ubiquity of strong asymmetric dependencies in these areas today. The formative nature of slavery to ongoing relations of production is well understood in the European and American societies that received slaves from West Africa. In illustrating their consequences for some of the sending societies, I hope to both contribute to our understanding of the disruption or, in some cases, continuity that European arrival represented to the existing practices of slavery and to underscore the relevance of the slave trade to labour relations in the present.
2021–2024
Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany
2016–2019
M.A. in English and American Studies, University of Paderborn, Germany
2010–2014
B.A. in Honours, English and International Studies, Osun State University, Nigeria
2021–2024
Research Associate, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany
2019–2020
Research Assistant, “Hybrid Narrativity Research Group”, Universität Paderborn, Germany
2017–2019
Student Assistant, University of Paderborn, Germany
2017
Editor (Intern), Education as A Vaccine (EVA), Nigera