Institute of Cultural Studies OAU Ife

24/08/2026

Publishing opportunity in Ife: Journal of the Institute of Cultural Studies! Find details in the call for papers below.

25/05/2026

Annual Lecture in Honour of Baba Osundagbonu Ifayemi Elebuibon

20/05/2026

Communiqué of the Annual Lecture in Honour of Baba Osundagbonu Ifayemi Elebuibon

Held on 19 May 2026, Organised by the Institute of Cultural Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University

The 2026 Annual Lecture in Honour of Osundagbonu Ifayemi Elebuibon (Araba Awo of Osogbo) was convened on 19 May 2026 at Oduduwa Hall, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, commencing at 10:51 a.m. The event brought together traditional rulers, scholars, students, and distinguished guests to engage with the life, intellectual legacy, and enduring contributions of one of Africa's foremost custodians of Yoruba cultural traditions and Indigenous knowledge systems.

The programme opened with formal acknowledgements coordinated by Dr Raheem and Chief Ogunremi, followed by Ìwúre conducted by the Araba Agbaye, a ritual invocation employing schnapps, obi, and orogbo (bitter kola), which situated the lecture within Yoruba cosmological tradition and affirmed its grounding in Indigenous epistemic protocols. The attendance of students from public and private schools across Ile-Ife gave institutional expression to the event's commitment to intergenerational cultural transmission.

The Director of the Institute of Cultural Studies, Prof. Olusegun Oladosu, in his welcome address, underscored the imperative of sustaining platforms that advance African epistemologies and Indigenous cultural heritage. Opening remarks were delivered by HRM Ọba Dr Hammed Makama Oyelude, CON, while goodwill messages were presented by Prof. Gbenga Fasiku, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Prof. Akanni Ibukun Akinyemi, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), representing the Vice-Chancellor. Cultural performances foregrounding Yoruba artistic traditions punctuated the proceedings.

In the keynote address, Prof. Adebisi Ademakinwa offered a rigorous account of Baba Elebuibon's contributions to Ifa philosophy, Yoruba cultural scholarship, and African Indigenous knowledge systems. Tracing his familial roots and intellectual formation, the address mapped his multidisciplinary output across film, music, literature, performance, education, and cultural advocacy, positioning him as a living archive whose work has substantially advanced the global dissemination and preservation of African knowledge traditions.

The keynote further argued for the systematic integration of Baba Elebuibon's intellectual paradigms in Ifa studies into contemporary cultural scholarship, stressing the institutional responsibility of universities to anchor Indigenous narratives through teaching, documentation, research, and archival preservation.

The discussant, Chief Kola Abiola (Oluwo) Obaluru, Obatala of Ife, offered incisive reflections on the scholarly imperative to document and engage living cultural intellectuals while they remain accessible. His contribution drew particular attention to the awokose — the succinct interpretive utterances embedded in the Ifa corpus, as a productive resource for contemporary scholarship, and reinforced the urgency of truth-centred, rigorous inquiry into Indigenous knowledge custodians.

The Q&A session produced a collective call for the continuity of the Annual Lecture as a strategic institutional platform for African cultural heritage preservation and the cultivation of future scholars in Indigenous knowledge traditions. The royal father of the day, Oba Alayelua Dr Adeyeye Enitan Babatunde Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, was represented by Olori Ashley Afolasade Ogunwusi, who affirmed the lecture's role in deepening public understanding of Yoruba cultural heritage.

Dr June Temitope Gbadamosi
Rapporteur

19/02/2026

Yesterday, the room went silent.

Not the silence of discomfort, but the kind that settles when something true has passed through a space and left its mark.
For our second Wednesday Film Screening, we gathered to watch the story of the Clotilda: the last ship to illegally carry enslaved Africans to American shores in 1860, deliberately sunk by its owner to bury the evidence of his crime. A wreck hidden for over a century. A story that refused, in the end, to stay submerged.
Watching this history unfold in the seminar room at the Institute carried a particular kind of weight. One that is difficult to put into words during the film itself, but demands to be reckoned with afterwards.

Our reflection on the screening, what the film holds, what the silence meant, and why it matters here, in this context, at this moment, is now up on Substack. It's a ten-minute read, and we think it's worth your time.

Some histories don't just ask to be learned. They ask to be felt, revisited, and carried forward.

🔗 Read the full reflection here: https://drjunegbadamosi.substack.com/p/what-the-water-remembers-ancestral?r=ppyp6

The Wednesday Film Screening Series continues. Follow this page to stay informed of upcoming screenings.

26/10/2025

You are all invited...

10/02/2025

Join us tomorrow, by 3.30pm

22/01/2025

ICS Webinar Series 2025 - January Editions
Title: “Yoruba Cultural Belief, Tradition and Utilisation of Modern Dental Services for Oral Health” was discussed by Prof. G.O. Ajibade from the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, and Professor Olusegun Ogunba.
At the Prof. Isaac Adeagbo Akinjogbin Seminar Room in the Institute of Cultural Studies Complex, near the Department of Dramatic Arts, OAU, Ile-Ife.


Jojolo Olodumare
AAU Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma Edo State
Obafemi Awolowo University
Afro Culture
Yorubawuyi
Yorubawood community
Ile-Oko Ile-Eko Nio
Osun Lifestyle

09/01/2025

Monthly Webinar Series - September Edition
Title - FROM THE HAVE-MORE TO THE HAVE-LESS: RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND LEADERSHIP IN AFRICA

06/12/2023

The Institute of Cultural Studies,
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

cordially invites you to the next in the

*ICS WEBINAR SERIES
*
TOPIC: African Identities in Colonial and Decolonial Horizons

DATE: 14th December, 2023. TIME: 3.00 WAT

As usual, the event will be bimodal, holding physically and virtually via Zoom.

The physical meeting will hold at the Faculty of Arts’ Board Room, Humanities Block II, OAU, Ile-Ife.

Virtual via zoom: https://bit.ly/ics-webdec

Chair: Professor Yunusa Kehinde Salami, Department of Philosophy, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

Discussant: Dr. M. B. Omigbule, Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

Presenter: Professor Morgan Ndlovu, a Professor and an NRF-rated researcher at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation of the University of Johannesburg. He previously worked as a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Zululand and an Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of South Africa, respectively. He is a transdisciplinary scholar with research interests in decolonizing knowledge and power, indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), curriculum and pedagogic studies, education rights, and transformation. His most recent publications include: Performing Indigeneity: Spectacles of Culture and Identity in Coloniality (Pluto), and Marxism and Decolonization in the 21st Century: Living Theories and True Ideas (Routledge). He is currently working on a research project tentatively titled: Decolonial Indigeneity: An Insight into the Idea of African Knowledges

Abstract

The production and reproduction of African identities in theory and praxis take place within what one can describe in terms of colonial and decolonial horizons. Thus, there is, on one hand, an Africanity produced in the consciousness of Western thought tradition, and another produced in the consciousness and divergent worldview and world sensing of African thinkers in their decolonial horizons. In the first instance, being and becoming African is primarily influenced and shaped by Western theo-politics and geopolitics of knowledge that led to the existential classifications of human species, land masses, and waters according to Western cartographic mappings of the world and hierarchization of identities and in the second instance, is the being and becoming African charted in the mold of the third nomos of the earth after the rupture of the colonial horizon of modernity. In this presentation, I seek to explicate the idea of being and becoming African within the framework of the inaugural moment of African entanglement in the colonial horizon of modernity as well as within the framework of the moment of disentanglement through the decolonial horizons.

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Institute of Cultural Studies Lecture Series. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.