Draft:Senayon Olaoluwa

Professor Senayon Olaoluwa is a Nigerian teacher of diaspora and transnational studies at the University of Ibadan’s Institute of African Studies.He is the initiator and pioneer coordinator of the Ibadan School of Diaspora Studies. He was recently appointed pioneer Director of TETFUND Center of Excellence for Diaspora Studies by the University of Ibadan on 1st March, 2024. His scholarly interests are at the intersection of migration, diaspora and transnational studies; postcolonial literature; and environmentalism and ecological studies. file:Prof. Senayon Olaoluwa

Education and career
Prof. Senayon Olaoluwa (born 26th October, 1971) hails from Obakobe, Ado-Odo in Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area of Ogun State. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in English at the Ogun State University (now Olabisi Onabanjo University), Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria in 1997. He obtained his Masters in the same field at the University of Ibadan six years later. He then moved to South Africa where he received his doctorate degree in African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2009. His Ph.D. thesis was titled: "Inscribing Dispersal: The Politics of Exile in African Poetry".

Prof. Olaoluwa began his teaching career at the Osun State University, Osogbo in 2009. He joined the University of Ibadan in 2013 as a senior research fellow and pioneer coordinator of the Diaspora and Transnational Studies ProgramMe at the Institute of African Studies, where he would later be appointed as the institute's director, and ultimately confirmed as a full professor in 2023.

Achievements
Prof. Olaoluwa is a Professor of Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Ibadan and the Inaugural Director, TETFund Centre of Excellence for Diaspora Studies, University of Ibadan, a position he has held since March 1 2024.

He was the Acting Director, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, between from 2020 to 2022.

He is the proponent of Extalgia, the theory that describes the grief and suffering exhibited by the left-behind as predicated on the migration of their loved ones into diaspora and other lands.

Olaoluwa’s scholarly works have been published in various academic journals including Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, African Affairs, African Studies Review, Journal of African Cultural Studies, Journal of Borderlands Studies, Journal of Literary Studies, Journal of Film and Video, English Studies, Social Dynamics, among others.

Olaoluwa has served as editor of several academic journals, including African Notes, African Nebula, Kritikos, and the Journal of Black Culture and International Understanding. He is Co-Editor of African Studies published by Routledge Taylor & Francis (London & New York) :

He has at different times received scholarly fellowships and over 80 international travel grants amongst which is the Centre for Cultural Inquiry at the University of Konstanz; All Africa House Fellowship at the University of Cape Town; and the African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies, among others. In early 2023, Olaoluwa was a visiting fellow at the African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Visiting Fellowship Programme, where he worked on his ongoing book project on "Extalgia," an idea that he conceived as an antithesis to nostalgia in exile and migration studies.

Selected publications
Prof. Olaoluwa has over 60 publication to his credit which has appeared in reputable academic journal.

Olaoluwa, Senayon. (2023). "Extalgia: Transcending the Legible Frames of Diaspora." Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 23, no. 1, 1-24.

Olaoluwa, Senayon. (2021). "Beyond Backpacking: Solo "Guerrilla" Border Crossing and the Penetration of Geographies of Power in Olabisi Ajala's An African Abroad  . Journal of Borderlands Studies'' Vol. 36 No. 3, 487-501.

Olaoluwa, Senayon (2020). "Dislocating Anthropocene: The City and Oil in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 27, no. 2, 243-267.

Olaoluwa, Senayon (2020). "Nationalism and Exile as Self-Inscription in Micere Mugo's My Mother's Poem and Other Songs." Research in African Literatures 51, no. 2, 149-166.

Olaoluwa, S. (2018). "We All Come from Brahma": Repetition and the Anticipation of Indian Cultural Imperialism in Indian Doctor. Journal of African Cultural Studies Vol. 30 No. 3, 279-292.

Olaoluwa, S. (2018). The Human and the non human:African sexuality debate " Queer in Africa, 2018

Olaoluwa, S. (2017). Uneasy Double Attachment: Homeland and Exile in Olu Oguibe’s A Gathering Fear. Journal of Literary Studies Vol. 33. No. 2, 82-108.

Olaoluwa, S. (2017). "Synmemory: Civil War Victimhood and the Balance of Tales in Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun and Habila's Measuring Time." Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies Vol. 43 No. 1, 19-31.

Olaoluwa, S. (2015). "Travel Gone Awry: Cosmopolitan Love and Female Ordeals in Games Women Play." Journal of Film and Video Vol. 67 No. 2, 21-34.

Olaoluwa, Senayon (2012). "'There was a Time': Postcolonial Ecology and Mourning in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow." European Journal of English Studies 16, no. 2, 125-136.