Professor Saheed Aderinto is a lecturer in the Florida International University teaching Professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies. He hails from Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State Nigeria.
Professor Saheed Aderinto was born on 22nd January 1979. He had his primary education in Adeen International School and his secondary school education in Ibadan City Academy. He went ahead to study History at the prestigious University of Ibadan where he had Bachelor of Arts (BA) in History in 2004. In 2005, Aderinto travelled to the United States, where he had his Masters Degree in University of Texas at Austin. He completed his MA programme in 2007 and his PHD in 2010 respectively.
Aderinto became a household name in Nigeria in 2023 as he clinched the notable Dan David Prize, winning a huge sum of 300, 000 US dollars for his illustrious contributions to historical research in Africa, Nigeria in particular. His scholastic acumen has made him publish no fewer than eight books, thirty six articles on different journals, forty articles on encyclopaedia and twenty books reviews.
The selection committee of Dan David Prize showered encomium on Aderinto for his robust impact in the historical development of Nigeria, “situating African history at the cutting edge of diverse literatures in the histories of sexuality, nonhumans, and violence, noting that it is exceptional to see a single person leading scholarship in all of these fields.”
While congratulating the Ibadan born professor, the US Mission wrote in a Facebook post, “The first Nigerian to receive the $300,000 Dan David Prize—the largest financial reward for excellence in the historical discipline in the world. Professor Aderinto is the Founding President of the Lagos Studies Association.”
The Dan Prize stated the quality of Aderinto, “Aderinto’s work challenges historians to think about what constitutes the past in completely new ways, to ask new questions about the makers of history and to question conventional assumptions about power, agency and authority,” the website reads.
“He aims to recalibrate conventional definitions of sources used to reconstruct African history.”
The contributions of Aderinto towards the research-based history of Nigeria in Nigeria cannot be overemphasised. He leaves no stone unturned as he writes about violence, sex, medicine, colonisation and the political culture of the Nigerian society. His published books are: book, When Sex Threatened the State, Animality and Colonial Subjecthood: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria; Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria, Firearms, among others. His first book, When Sex Threatened the State, was the winner of Nigerian Studies Association’s Book Award Prize in 2016.
