Dr Senayon Olaoluwa

Prof Senayon Olaoluwa’s multidisciplinary research expertise has broadly drawn upon the notion of diaspora as an umbrella concept that describes experiences that are suggestive of ''not being home'' in both literal and figurative terms. Such notions include migration, transnationalism, globalization, cosmopolitanism, backpacking, migrancy, exile, transgression, mobilities, modernity, dislocation, dispersal, among others. Over the years, his major research focus has been defined by the engagement with and interrogation of most of these concepts and practices in culture, ethnography, literature, film and music with respect to Africa and its Diaspora. He has examined not only the mobility and migration of humans across time and space; he has also scrutinized the figurative dynamics of mobility in relation to passages of time, knowledge, theory, memory, cultures, ideas, texts, practices, sexuality, narrative, history, power and ecology. His fledgling theory, extalgia, describes the trauma of being left behind in the context of migration and the creative response of transcendence that the condition inspires. The theory also underscores the limit of transcendence while advocating the development of viable institutional systems of support to cater to the vulnerabilities of the left-behind the world over. His publications, numbering over 60, have appeared in high-impact factor journals, including Third World Quarterly, Research in African Literatures, African Studies Review, English Studies, English Studies in Africa, African Affairs, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, Journal of Borderlands Studies, among others. Senayon is a recipient of over 80 international grants in travel and research fellowships, including the American Council of Learned Societies-Africa Humanities Fellowship, USA, DAAD, Germany, All Africa House Fellowship, South Africa, African Guest Researcher Fellowship, Sweden, STIAS Fellowship, South Africa and Africa Oxford Initiative Fellowship, Oxford University, United Kingdom. In 2020, his article, “Dislocating Anthropocene: The City and Oil in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water,” was ranked in the global top 10% by Oxford University Press and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Senayon has read findings from his research at international meetings in Nigeria, Africa, Europe, Asia and North America.