Interview with Bolanle Awe

Abstract

A distinguished scholar, feminist, and educator, Bolanle Awe attended St. Anne's School, high school in Ibadan, and completed the Advanced Level program at the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge. Dr. Awe graduated with an MA (Honors) in history from St. Andrews University, Scotland in 1958 and a DPhil in history from the University of Oxford, England in 1964. She joined the Department of History, University of Ibadan (UI) on October 1, 1960--the date of Nigeria’s independence--and became a full professor in 1976. The same year, she became a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of African Studies at UI, and she later served as the first female director of the Institute (1983 to 1991). During this period she focused on women’s history. One of her most important contributions to feminism and scholarship is the Women’s Research and Documentation Centre (WORDOC), which she founded in 1985. For this accomplishment, she is referred to as the matriarch of feminist history in Nigeria. WORDOC continues to serve as a resource center for the study of women. Among others, she was the founding chair of the Nigerian National Commission for Women (1990-1992) (which later became the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development), secretary of the National Council of Women’s Societies, Western Region Branch (1971-1973), and a member of the founding committee of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. She spent many years working on the development of higher education in Nigerian universities and went on to serve as the Prof-Chancellor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN).