ibrahim Bàbátúndé Anọ́ba

ibrahim Bàbátúndé Anọ́ba is a cultural and legal historian of Africa, specializing in the history of religious movements and identity formation. His research explores the intersections of jurisprudence and spiritual citizenship, specifically how their convergence has shaped the transformations in religious and ethnic identities. Anọ́ba earned his PhD in African History, with a designated emphasis in African Diaspora Studies, from the University of California, Davis, in 2026. He is spending the summer of 2026 as a Visiting Postgraduate Researcher in the School of History and Cultures at the University of Birmingham.

At the University of Michigan, Anọ́ba will complete his first monograph, tentatively titled The Making of Olórìṣà: How Criminalizing Religion Created a Radical African Identity and an Alternative Agenda for Decolonization in Nigeria. The project examines how devotees of Òrìṣà religion in present-day Nigeria, collectively known as Olórìṣà, emerged as a distinct demographic through decades of state-sponsored religious persecution. It interrogates how Olórìṣà's practices of endurance and self-fashioning became consequential to both the emergence of decolonial thought and the construction of postcolonial identities in Nigeria. 

Since 2015, Anọ́ba has held advisory roles in several of Africa's leading pubic policy think tanks, and he currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of African Liberty. His scholarly publications have appeared in History in Africa, Journal of Religion in Africa, and Journal of Church and State. A forthcoming article, "Voice of the Dead," a study of spiritual jurisprudence and contested meanings of inheritance in early colonial Lagos, will appear in Law and History Review in the fall of 2026. Anọ́ba's research has received awards and support from American Historical Association, the African Studies Association, the American Society for Legal History, the New York Public Library, the Hoover Institution, and the Huntington Library, among others.