Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi

Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi is an associate professor of history at Howard University. Her research interests include urban histories of Lagos and West Africa, maps and mapmaking, historical GIS, and spatial humanities. In 2019, her maps and research were featured in Journey of an African Colony, a Netflix documentary film. Her historical maps and visualizations of old Lagos are hosted on newmapsoldlagos.com.

Education and Career

Trained as both historian and computer engineer, Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi's research into the history of West African cities combines a set of interdisciplinary interests in women, cartography, and digital humanities. She earned her bachelor's degree at Northeastern University where she was a Greg Jarvis Memorial Scholarship recipient. She then proceeded to receive her master's degree and PhD in history at New York University in 2016.

She joined University of California, Riverside’s History department as an Assistant Professor in July 2015. She moved to Howard University as an associate professor in 2024. Prior to joining Howard, she was an Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Rice University's Humanities Research Center.

Adelusi-Adeluyi's latest book, Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place and Politics in a 19th Century African City, explores the city's 19th-century history, rebuilding its past as a series of encounters: between men and women, enslaved and free, between the past and present, Èkó (the old town) and Lagos, and between the land and lagoons. The maps and data sources are available online at imaginelagos.com.

Adelusi-Adeluyi's research has been funded by the Andrew Mellon, Woodrow Wilson and Hellman foundations.

Selected Publication

Adelusi-Adeluyi, Ademide (2024). Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-century African City. Ohio University Press. ISBN 978-0-8214-2488-9.

Candido, Mariana P., Adam Jones, Hilary Jones, Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi, Vanessa S. Oliveira, Natalie Everts, Lorelle Semley et al., eds. African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability & Mobility, 1660-1880. Boydell and Brewer, 2019.

Adelusi-Adeluyi, Ademide (2019), "To be Female & Free: Mapping Mobility & Emancipation in Lagos, Badagry & Abẹokuta 1853–1865", African Women in the Atlantic World, Boydell and Brewer Limited, pp. 131–147, ISBN 978-1-78744-430-0

Adelusi-Adeluyi, Ademide (2020). ""Africa for the Africans?" – Mapmaking, Lagos, and the Colonial Archive". History in Africa. 47: 275–296. doi:10.1017/hia.2020.9. ISSN 0361-5413.

Adelusi-Adeluyi, Ademide (2020). "Mapping old Lagos: digital histories and maps about the past". The Historian. 82 (1): 51–65. doi:10.1080/00182370.2020.1734725. ISSN 0018-2370.

Adelusi-Adeluyi, Ademide (2018-12-01). "Historical Tours of "New" Lagos". Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 38 (3): 443–454. doi:10.1215/1089201x-7208790. ISSN 1089-201X.