OKUNOYE Oyeniyi
Email address: ookunoye@oauife.edu.ng
ORCID iD: ORCID iD:0000-0002-2542-0664
Academic Qualifications: B.Ed; M.A.; PhD (Ibadan)
Areas of Specialisation: African Poetry, Oral Literature, Literature of the African Diaspora
Title of M.A. Thesis: (1993) “The Ibadan Tradition in Nigerian Poetry 1957-1992: A Critical History”
Title of Ph.D Thesis: (2002) “Ethnic Traditions and the African Postcolonial Poetic Imagination”
Fellowships:
2010: Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Fellowship
2009: Alexander von Humboldt Return Fellowship
2008: Alexander von Humboldt German Language Scholarship
2007: CODESRIA Advanced Research Fellowship
2007: Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship
2006: British Academy Visiting Fellowship
2003: Harry Oppeinheimer Visiting Scholar Fellowship, Centre for African
Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Research Grants:
2020: TETFund National Research Fund
2018: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Grant for Renewed Research Stay in Germany
2017: Travel Grant to the 7th ECAS Conference, Basel, Switzerland
2017: Alexander von Humboldt Conference Travel Grant
2015: Alexander von Humboldt Conference Grant
2013: Alexander von Humboldt Grant for Renewed Research Stay in Germany
2010: Alexander von Humboldt Grant for Research Equipment
2010: Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Fellowship
2009: Alexander von Humboldt Grant for Renewed Research Stay in Germany
2008: Alexander von Humboldt German Language Scholarship
2000: International Travel Grant from Centre de Coopération au
Développement, Universite de Liege, Belgium
Ongoing Grants: TETFund National Research Fund
Edited Publications:
2022: Literature and Popular Culture; Quest for Humane Development. Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press Limited.
2022: (with Remi Raji, Natasha Himmelman, Idowu Omoyele and Bongani Kona Chants, Dreams and Other Grammars of Love: A Gendenksschrift for Harry Garuba. Ibadan: Kraft Books Ltd.
2022: O. Okunoye, I.Ibrahim, I.Ihidero Eds. Literature and Popular Culture: Quest for Humane Development. Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 2022. 793 pp.
2008: The Postcolonial Lamp: Essays in Honour of Daniel Izevbaye.Eds. Aderemi Raji-Oyelade and
Oyeniyi Okunoye. Ibadan: Bookraft.
Articles/ Book Chapters:
2022: ‘‘Second Generation Nigerian Poetry: Activist Writing in Popular Idioms’’D.Ker. O.Obafemi and T. Abubakar Eds. Literature in English for Tertiary Education in Nigeria. Lagos: South-West Zone Academic Publishing Centre, pp.393-420.
2017: “Postcolonial African Poetry” in Jahan Ramanzani Ed. Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 31-44.
2013: “ ‘Jean–Paul Sartre taught me’: Benedict Mobayode Ibitokun in Conversation with Oyeniyi Okunoye”. In Chijioke Uwasomba et al eds. Existentialism, Literature and the Humanities in Africa: Essays in Honour of Professor Benedict Mobayode Ibitokun. Gottingen: Cuvillier Verlag, 510-518.
2011: “Lanrewaju Adepoju and the Making of Modern Yoruba Poetry” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 81. 2: 171-203.
2011: “Popular Poetry, Politics and the Violated Populace: An Interview with Lanrewaju
Adepoju”, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. 81.2 (Online Edition) http://journals.cambridge.org/downloadsup.php
2011: “Writing Resistance: Dissidence and Visions of Healing in Nigerian Poetry of the Military Era”. Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 48/1 (Autumn) :64-85.
2010: “Ewi, Yoruba Modernity and the Public Space”, Research in African Literatures 41. 4 (Winter) 43-64.
2010: “Half a Century of Reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart”. English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 91.1, 42-57.
2009: “Pan –Africanism and Globalized Black Identity in the Poetry of Kofi Anyidoho and Kwadwo Opokwu-Agyemang”. A Review of International English Literature 40.1, 57-79.
2009: “On the Cultural Utility of Africana Literature” in Babawale, Tunde, Akin Alao, Ayo Omidire and Tony Onwumah (eds) Teaching and Propagating African and Diaspora History and Culture (Lagos: CBAAC). 401-419.
2008: (with Aderemi Raji-Oyelade) “Of Literary History and the Critical Tradition: An Interview with D.S. Izevbaye“ in The Postcolonial Lamp: Essays in Honour of Daniel Izevbaye.
- (with Aderemi Raji-Oyelade) “Dan Izevbaye: The Scholar-Critic as Illuminant” in The Postcolonial Lamp: Essays in Honour of Dan Izevbaye. xiii-xxii.
- “Alterity, Marginality and the National Question in the Poetry of the Niger Delta” Cahier d’etudes africaines 191. 413-436.
2008: “Convention and Invention in Modern Yoruba Poetry: An Interview with Tubosun Oladapo”, Ibadan Journal of English Studies.5 .330-352.
2008: “Niyi Osundare” in: Companion to Twentieth-Century World Poetry R. Victoria Arana Ed. New York: Facts on File, 2008, p. 333 – 335.
2008: “Kofi Anyidoho” in Companion to Twentieth-Century World Poetry R. Victoria Arana Ed. New York: Facts on File, 2008, p. 21 – 23
2007: “Niyi Osundare and the Marginalised Majority in Songs of the Season”. Commonwealth Essays and Studies. Spring 29.2 .75-85.
2007: “The Trope of the Ancestor in Contemporary Black Poetry”. Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora. 8. 140 – 161
2007: “Postcoloniality, African Poetry and Counter-Discourse”. Matatu: A Journal of African Society 35.111-131.
2006: “Locating the Other: Re-reading Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners”, Palara 10 (Fall ): 13-22 .
2005: “The Margins or the Metropole? The Location of Home in Odia Ofeimun’s London Letters and Other Poems”. Kunapipi : Journal of Postcolonial Writing XXVII: I 93-107
2005: “We Too Sing: Kofi Anyidoho and Ewe Poetic Practices in Elegy for the Revolution”. Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 40: 91-111.
2004: “The Critical Reception of Modern African Poetry”. Cahier d’etudes africaines XLIV (4) 176 .769-791
2004: “Textual Attitude, Colonial Literature and the Mental Subjugation of the Colonised in Africa”. Neohelicon. XXX. 1.155-165
2003: “Women’s Rights as Human Rights: The Politics of Representation in Titi Ufomata’s Short Fiction”. New Literatures Review.40.103-115.
2003(with Akin Odebunmi) “Different Story, Different Strategy: A Comparative Study of Chinua Achebe’s Style(s) in A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah”.Studia Anglica Posnaniensia.39.289-301
2002: “Writing the Homeland: Talking with Tanure Ojaide” .Writing the Homeland: The Politics of Tanure Ojaide “Ed. Onookome Okome. Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies Series.223-234.
2002: “The Making of Nigerian Poetry at Ibadan: 1980-1993”. ES Review 24.109-118.
2001: “Dramatizing Postcoloniality: Nationalism and the Rewriting of History in Ngugi and Mugo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi”. History in Africa 28. 225-234
2001: “Exilic Consciousness and Self-Inscription in L.S. Senghor and Olu Oguibe”. Journal of African Travel-Writing. 8/9. 151-166
2001: “Literaturen Afrikanischen Sprachen Westafrika”. [African Language Literatures: West Africa] Das Africa-Lexicon. Ed. Jacob E. Mabe. (Stuggart: Verlag J.B.Metzler).355-357.
1999: “Captives of Empire: Early Ibadan Poets and Poetry.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 34.2.105-116.
1999/2000/2001: “Signifying Blackness: The Black Aesthetic Revisited”.
Africa: Revista do Estudos Africanos. 22/23 (1).121-128.
1998: “Post-Civil Nigerian Poetry: The Ibadan Experience”. AFRICA. LIII.2 .266-275.
1997: “Representations of the Ruling Class in Recent Nigerian Poetry”. Literary Half-Yearly.xxxiii.2.73-84
1997: “Negritude Poetry”. Poetry in English: Eds.A.O.Dasylva and Jegede O.B. (Ibadan: SamBookman Educational Services, 137-145.
Reviews /Review Essays:
2019: “Editorial Note: The Imperative of Disseminating Research in African Oral Literatures in the Twentieth Century’’. Nigerian Journal of Oral Literatures 6.7-8.
2006: “Bernth Lindfors and African Letters”, Journal of Asian and African Studies 41: 507-512
2002: Review of Funsho Aiyejina’s The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories.Wasafir: Journal of New Writing.32: 66-67.
2001: “Re-reading Postcolonial African Writing: A Review Essay”.
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 3.2. 309-311.
Staff Profile
Professor Oyeniyi Okunoye holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Ibadan, where his doctoral research explored ethnic traditions in the African postcolonial poetic imagination. A scholar of notable breadth and depth, he specializes in African poetry, oral literature, literary theory, and the literature of the African diaspora. His teaching and research consistently interrogate the forms, traditions, and aesthetics that define the literary cultures of the Black world.
Professor Okunoye served as Head of the Department of English from 2014 to 2018 and as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 2021 to 2025. He has published widely in leading international journals in literary and African studies and regularly reviews manuscripts for major scholarly outlets. He is the Editor of Nigerian Journal of Oral Literatures, a section editor of Postcolonial Text, and was also recently appointed a section editor of Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, South Africa’s oldest literary journal.
A widely respected scholar, Professor Okunoye has held visiting research appointments at the University of Cape Town, the University of Birmingham, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Bayreuth. His research has been supported by prestigious institutions including the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the British Academy, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the Harry Oppenheimer Foundation, the University of Cambridge, the Nigerian Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). He has also participated in collaborative projects funded by the European Research Council, the Carnegie Foundation and the Fulbright Program.
Beyond his research and teaching, Professor Okunoye is deeply committed to capacity-building in the humanities. He has mentored numerous early-career scholars across Africa and continues to play an active role in regional academic development initiatives.
His current research interests include Nigerian short fiction, emerging genres of written and performance poetry in West Africa, and the performance of identity and nationhood in African national anthems.