CFR Welcomes Ebenezer Obadare as Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) welcomes Ebenezer Obadare to its David Rockefeller Studies Program as the Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies. At CFR, he will research and write on U.S. relations with Africa and issues related to political, economic, social, religious, and cultural developments in Africa.

Before joining CFR, he was professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. 

Obadare was a Ralf Dahrendorf Scholar and a Ford Foundation International Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was a lecturer in international relations at the Obafemi Awolowo University from 1995 to 2001 and a political reporter for The News and TEMPO magazines from 1993 to 1995.

In addition to his upcoming book, Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria (University of Notre Dame Press, fall 2022), Obadare has authored numerous other works, including Christianity, Sexuality and Citizenship in Africa (2019), Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (2018), and Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa: Leadership in Transformation (2016). His essays have appeared in leading Africanist and political journals, including the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), African Affairs, and Politique Africaine. He is the editor of the Journal of Modern African Studies and contributing editor of Current History.

Obadare received his BA in history and his MSc in international relations from the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria and his PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.