Professor Oyeronke Oyewumi Wins the 2021 Distinguished Africanist Award
Professor Oyeronke Oyewumi, a Nigerian gender scholar, has been named the winner of the 2021 Distinguished Africanist Award by the African Studies Association. She is the first woman to win the award.
A daughter of the Soun of Ogbomosho, a renowned ruler in Oyo State; Oyeronke Oyewumi currently serves as Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, New York.
In a letter, Stony Brook congratulated her on her newest achievement:
“It is a great pleasure to inform you that the African Studies Association has selected you as the winner of the 2021 Distinguished Africanist Award.”
As the recipient of the 2021 Africanist award, Oyeronke Oyewumi will receive a cash gift of $500, a plaque, lifetime membership to the African Studies Association, and complimentary annual meeting registration.
The Distinguished Africanist Award is conferred to individuals in recognition of lifetime distinguished contributions to African studies. The Award is presented at the Annual Meeting Awards Ceremony.
Born in Nigeria and educated at the University of Ibadan and the University of California at Berkeley, Oyewumi has been widely recognized for her work. She received the 1998 Distinguished Book Award in the Gender and Sex Section of the American Sociological Association, was a 1998 Finalist for the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association, 2003-4 Rockefeller Humanities Fellow and a recipient of the Ford Foundation grant.
Oyewumi has also received several research fellowships, including Rockefeller Fellowship, a Presidential fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. Oyewumi’s most recent research support was a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship on Human Security (2003/2004), managed by National Council for Research on Women (NCRW).
In her award-winning book The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (University of Minnesota Press, 1997), “Oyeronke Oyewumi makes the case that the narrative of gendered corporeality that dominates the Western interpretation of the social world is a cultural discourse and cannot be assumed uncritically for other cultures.”
Congratulations Oyeronke Oyewumi on your newest achievement.