Dame Karin Barber | |
---|---|
Born | Karin Judith Barber 2 July 1949 |
Nationality | British |
Spouse | Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias (partner) |
Academic background | |
Education | Lawnswood High School |
Alma mater | Girton College, Cambridge University College London University of Ife |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Cultural anthropology |
Sub-discipline |
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Institutions |
Dame Karin Judith Barber, DBE , FBA (born 2 July 1949) is a British cultural anthropologist and academic, who specialises in the Yoruba-speaking area of Nigeria. From 1999 to 2017, she was Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Before joining the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham, she was a lecturer at the University of Ife in Nigeria. Since 2018, she has been Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
Barber has written two introductory textbooks for the Yoruba language, and a number of books concerning Yoruba culture, and oral literature and written literature in Africa. She has been awarded a number of prizes for her publications, and has been recognised by her peers and the British government for her contributions to scholarship.
Barber was born on 2 July 1949 to Charles and Barbara Barber. [1] She was educated at Lawnswood High School, an all-girls state grammar school in Lawnswood, Leeds. [1] She studied English at Girton College, Cambridge, and graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree; as per tradition, her BA was promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Cantab). [1] [2]
Barber then changed direction and studied social anthropology at University College London, completing a graduate diploma. [1] She then undertook postgraduate research at the University of Ife in Nigeria, where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree. [1] [2] Her research concerned the "role of oral poetic performance in everyday life" in Okuku, Osun State, Nigeria. [2]
From 1977 to 1984, Barber was a lecturer in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Ife in Nigeria. [1] Yoruba, which she had learnt during her doctorate, was used as the medium of instruction. [2] [3] In 1985, she moved back to the United Kingdom and joined the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham. [1] She was a lecturer from 1985 to 1993, a senior lecturer from 1993 to 1997, and then Reader from 1997 to 1999. [1] From 1998 to 2001, she served as Director of the Centre of West African Studies. [1] In 1999, she was appointed Professor of African Cultural Anthropology. [1] [4] She retired from Birmingham in 2017, and was appointed professor emeritus. [5] Since 2018, she has been Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. [6]
In addition to her full-time academic positions, Barber has held a number of visiting appointments. For the 1993/1994 academic year she was Preceptor of the Institute of Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University in Illinois, United States. [2] In 1999, she was Melville Herskovits Distinguished Visiting Professor at Northwestern University. [7] In 2014, she was the Mellon Foundation Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. [2]
Barber has held senior positions with the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. She was a member of the council from 2007 to 2008, and was its Vice-President (Humanities) from 2008 to 2010. [2] [4]
Barber is a cultural anthropologist, whose research has remained focused within the area in which she did her doctorate. She specialises in the "Yoruba-speaking area of Nigeria" (the Yoruba people), and their culture, religion, and oral and written literature. [4] She has also looked comparatively at "popular culture across sub-Saharan Africa" and researched the "uses of literacy in colonial Africa". [2]
As part of broader research interests, Barber teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on the popular culture of Africa, African religion and ritual, and also teaches the Yoruba language at beginner level. [2]
Barber's partner is Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias. [1] He is a historian of medieval West Africa. [8]
In 2003, Barber was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. [4] She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to African studies [9] and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to the study of African culture. [10]
In 1991, Barber was awarded the "Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology" by the Royal Anthropological Institute for I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town, her first book. [11] In 2001, she was awarded the "Melville J. Herskovits Award" by the African Studies Association for The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theatre. [12] In 2009, she was awarded the "Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form" by the Media Ecology Association for The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics. [13] In 2013, she was awarded the "Paul Hair Prize" by the African Studies Association for Print Culture and the First Yoruba Novel. [14]
Moremi Ajasoro was a legendary Yoruba queen and folk heroine in the Yorubaland region of present-day southwestern Nigeria who assisted in the liberation of the Yoruba kingdom of Ife from the neighbouring Ugbo Kingdom.
Chief Ògúnwán̄dé "Wán̄dé" Abím̄bọ́lá is a Nigerian academician, a professor of Yoruba language and literature, and a former vice-chancellor of the University of Ife. He has also served as the Majority Leader of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Chief Abimbola was installed as Àwísẹ Awo Àgbàyé in 1981 by the Ooni of Ife on the recommendation of a conclave of Babalawos of Yorubaland.
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William R. Bascom was an award-winning American folklorist, anthropologist, and museum director. He was a specialist in the art and culture of West Africa and the African Diaspora, especially the Yoruba of Nigeria.
The Yoruba people are a West African ethnic group who mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by the Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute more than 50 million people in Africa, are over a million outside the continent, and bear further representation among members of the African diaspora. The vast majority of the Yoruba population is today within the country of Nigeria, where they make up 20.7% of the country's population according to Ethnologue estimations, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. Most Yoruba people speak the Yoruba language, which is the Niger-Congo language with the largest number of native or L1 speakers.
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Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí is a Nigerian gender scholar and full professor of sociology at Stony Brook University. She acquired her bachelor's degree in political science at the University of Ibadan in Ibadan, Nigeria and went on to pursue her graduate degree in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Oyěwùmí is the winner of the African Studies Association's 2021 Distinguished Africanist Award, which recognizes and honours individuals who have contributed a lifetime of outstanding scholarship in African studies combined with service to the Africanist community.
The African Studies Association of the United Kingdom (ASAUK) formed in 1963 "to advance African studies, particularly in the United Kingdom, by providing facilities for the interchange of information and ideas and the co-ordination of activities by and between persons and institutions concerned with the study of Africa." Antony Allott and Roland Oliver led the founding of the group. In recent times the Royal African Society administers the association.
Sandra Elaine Greene is an American historian of West Africa and professor. She is Stephen '59 and Madeline '60 Anbinder Professor of African History and Chair of the History Department at Cornell University.
Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, FBA, is a Brazilian historian and Africanist specialising in epigraphic sources for the medieval history of West Africa as well as West African oral traditions and the Timbuktu Chronicles. Since his retirement in 2003, he has been Honorary Professor at the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. After graduating from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, in 1963, Moreas Farias taught at Bahia's Centre for Afro-Oriental Studies and at the Central College of Salvador; his association with the National Union of Students (Brazil) led to harassment from the military government of Brazil after 1964, prompting him to flee to Africa. Settling with his family in Ghana, he completed a Master of Arts degree at the University of Ghana, but fled once again to Senegal and then Nigeria following the Ghanaian coup of 1966; two years later, he took up an academic post at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, where he remained until retiring in 2003.
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John David Yeadon Peel was a British Africanist, sociologist and historian of religion in Africa, particularly in Nigeria. He was most notable for his studies of historical patterns of religious belief among the Yoruba people.
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