PhD Candidate Mathew Ayodele Wins Lagos Studies Association Best Graduate Student Paper Award

Congratulations to Mathew Ayodele, Stanford History Ph.D student, on receiving the Lagos Studies Association Best Graduate Student Paper Award for his paper, “Transactional Agency: Nigerians, Indigenous Authorities, and Colonial Officials Negotiating Museum Development, 1936-1945.”

The Lagos Studies Association (LSA) is an international, interdisciplinary organization of academic and non-academic practitioners focused on Lagos, Nigeria, and Africa. It deepens the rigor of contemporary scholarship through exchanges between academic and non-academic practitioners. LSA is one of the largest academic gatherings dedicated to Lagos, Nigerian, and African studies in the world, bringing together a community of scholars whose work engages critical, thought-provoking questions through rigorous academic research.

The award recognizes the best paper presented by a graduate student at the Lagos Studies Association. Mathew’s paper examines how Nigerian actors negotiated with colonial authorities over cultural heritage and museum development during the Second World War. It explores a nuanced understanding of African agency and examines how different actors, with unequal power relations, adopted strategic actions to pursue competing goals during precarious moments.

We congratulate Mathew on this well-deserved recognition and celebrate his contribution to African studies, Lagos studies, and the broader study of cultural heritage, power, and knowledge production.

*Announcement from Center for African Studies