Former Visiting Fellow (Spring 2016) and Dissertation Year Fellow (2008-09) Olukunle Owolabi was awarded the International Studies Association's 2024 Distinguished Book Prize in Ethnicity, Migration, and Nationalism for Ruling Emancipated Slaves and Indigenous Subjects: The Divergent Legacies of Forced Settlement and Colonial Occupation in the Global South.
The book was published by Oxford University Press in spring 2023, and Owolabi presented a lecture on it at the Kellogg Institute that fall. Drawing on evidence from more than 90 countries that gained independence after World War II, Ruling Emancipated Slaves and Indigenous Subjects is an examination of the divergent developmental legacies of forced settlement and colonial occupation on both sides of the Black Atlantic world.
Owolabi is associate professor and graduate program director in the Department of Political Science at Villanova University, where he teaches courses on comparative politics, African politics, comparative democratization, and the developmental legacies of colonialism. His research examines the developmental legacies of forced settlement and colonial occupation in the Global South.
He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Notre Dame.