Omolade Adunbi

Omolade Adunbi is a political and environmental anthropologist and professor of Afroamerican and African Studies in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS).  His research examines the dynamics of power, natural resource extractive practices, governance, human and environmental rights, culture, transnational institutions, multinational corporations, and the postcolonial state. His latest book, Enclaves of Exception: Special Economic Zones and Extractive Practices in Nigeria (Indiana University Press (2022), offers a new approach to exploring the relationship between oil and technologies of extraction and their interrelatedness to local livelihoods and environmental practices. His previous book, Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2015), addresses issues related to oil wealth, multinational corporations, transnational institutions, NGOs, and violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The book won the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain and Ireland’s Amaury Talbot book prize for the best book in the Anthropology of Africa in 2017. His current research engages with questions of climate politics and the ways in which environmental groups and activists use social media to promote their advocacy for the environment. His other project focuses on the growing interest of China in Africa's natural resources and its interrelatedness to infrastructural projects. His teaching interests include transnationalism, globalization, climate politics, social media culture, power, violence, human and environmental rights, the postcolonial state, social theory, resource governance, and contemporary African society, culture, and politics. He is the recipient of the 2022 John Dewey Award for his long-term commitment to undergraduate education. He also received the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award for excellence in teaching in 2016.