Dr. Samaila Suleiman, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria, Provotial Visiting Fellow-in-Residence on Black Life and History
In February and March, McGill will be hosting Dr. Samaila Suleiman, Associate Professor, of History, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. In addition to conducting research and co-teaching with Nanre, Dr. Sulieman will be holding a special workshop on archiving and a keynote lecture.
Samaila Suleiman is an Associate Professor of History in the Department of History, at Bayero University, Kano. He received his B.A. and M.A. in History from Bayero University, Kano, and graduated with a Ph.D. in Historical Studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa in 2015. His research interests lie at the intersection of historiography, identity, and the politics of knowledge production in Africa. Samaila has delivered guest lectures and papers at Cambridge, Oxford, Rutgers, Technical University of Berlin, Wilton Park, Sussex UK, etc.
He is a recipient of many fellowships and research grants including African Peacebuilding Network (APN) of the SSRC, New York; Presidential Fellow of African Studies Association/American Council of Learned Societies 2018; Fellow Summer Program in Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) Princeton, 2018/2019; Fellow Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI) Brown University USA 2014; and two time Fellow of the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa of the SSRC.
He was Deputy Director of Research and Documentation at Mambayya House, the Aminu Kano Center for Democratic Studies, and currently serves as the Regional Lead for West Africa, Association of Common Wealth Universities (ACU) Higher Education, and SDGs Network. Some of his recent publications include “Archives as Spaces of Power: The Social Life of the National Archives of Nigeria” Ibadan Journal of Humanistic Studies, 2022, and Katsina in Transition: Exploring the History of Royalty, Culture, Trade, and Security published by the Department of History and Security Studies, UMYUK, Nigeria, 2024. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, (JCAS) at Rhodes University, published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.