Boluwatife Akinro

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