Celebrating Toyin Falola: the father of African Ancestral Studies, By Samson O. Ijaola

It is indeed an honour that Lead City University is celebrating its first Emeritus Professor in the Humanities in January 2026.

…the argument for AAS extends from two closely related standpoints. The first is that existing disciplinary fields and subfields, such as history, anthropology, religious studies, indigenous languages, and folklore, have fragmented and integrated views of African cultural memory in ways that allow colonial-era taxonomies to flourish. Secondly, the true essence of Africa’s contemporary social, political, and developmental challenges cannot be fully understood without paying attention to its ancestral systems of knowledge…

Professor Toyin Falola is an enigma within African scholarship, who holds an uncommon position within the academic community. As one of the architects of Africa’s new intellectual, his commitment to reengineering the scope and modalities of how the continent’s past is taught, understood, and made available in public life is obviously a key indicator of his scholarly commitment to Africa. A notable historian with academic milestones, which include his role as the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, in addition to decades of active lecturing, writing, and institution-building capacities, are major cornerstones that give him both the credentials and an active platform to propose interdisciplinary academic interventions stretching far beyond the conventional study of history.

The esteemed scholar’s recent advocacy for a unique interdisciplinary field termed “African Ancestral Studies” (AAS) should therefore be seen in the light of a decade-long and rich experience, and academic backings to spearhead a rescue attempt in redefining African intellectual weight and its traditions from all forms of marginalisation, to foster cultural integration, indigenous science, and advocate for the inclusion of religious genealogies into scholarly curricula. Most importantly, the goal becomes coordinated efforts to investigate methodological fallacies and assumptions that have long undergirded Eurocentric accounts of indigenous knowledge and African history.

As it is, the argument for AAS extends from two closely related standpoints. The first is that existing disciplinary fields and subfields, such as history, anthropology, religious studies, indigenous languages, and folklore, have fragmented and integrated views of African cultural memory in ways that allow colonial-era taxonomies to flourish. Secondly, the true essence of Africa’s contemporary social, political, and developmental challenges cannot be fully understood without paying attention to its ancestral systems of knowledge, the traditional rites, social organisation, and indigenous science, particularly how these elements shape moral economies, social change, technology, and political perspectives.

As a result, the emergence of the African Ancestral Studies as a discrete field becomes necessary as a corrective measure to both standpoints. This implies that AAS serves as a corrective to an academic view that has undervalued endogenous epistemologies and to the prerogatives of the modern public, which has a faulty understanding of African identity and sense of belonging due to severance from cultural genealogies.

This corrective framing, often advocated in public settings during lectures and programme inaugurations in institutions, as was done at the University of Ghana, signals the dawn of a disciplinary project with civic and scholarly intent. On one hand is the intent to cultivate historical literacy that is reflexive about power, and on the other hand is the need to nurture popular knowledge that can inform policy and educational curricula.

In appreciation of Falola’s call, one must equate his commitment to AAS against his intellectual footprints. Over a purposeful career spanning four decades, this rare scholar has authored numerous publications on Atlanticism, religion, intellectual history, and the politics of memory. He is a veteran editor and author of countless volumes of academic work that have become standard references in African historiography and the Humanities.

As a result of his long-standing participation in institutional leadership roles, his active writing and publishing history, his mentoring of younger scholars, and his undisputed fervour for African intellectualism, Professor Falola’s proposals for emerging fields carry administrative and intellectual weight. His experience makes it easier to foster a programme that can elicit curricular change, incite new research programmes, and help build a body of methodological literature available to students.

Mr Falola’s scholarship is grounded in the tradition of African nationalist historiography, a school of thought that saw the African narrative articulated on African terms. While his work builds on this school, Falola is also profoundly influenced by the comparative perspectives that position Africa in the world. These overviews permit him to advocate for indigenous epistemic authenticity, without removing African scholarship from the global theoretical conversation.

As a result of his long-standing participation in institutional leadership roles, his active writing and publishing history, his mentoring of younger scholars, and his undisputed fervour for African intellectualism, Professor Falola’s proposals for emerging fields carry administrative and intellectual weight. His experience makes it easier to foster a programme that can elicit curricular change, incite new research programmes, and help build a body of methodological literature available to students.

For a fact, debaters and critics are right to question the ambitions of African Ancestral Studies. Any attempt to centralise “ancestral” knowledge risks empowering the past, immortalising cultural templates, or enabling elites who claim unearned authority as custodians of tradition. Commendably, Professor Falola had anticipated these critiques and, as such, dutifully emphasised an academic framework that checks for evidence and allows cross-disciplinary examination.

Widespread in his public lectures is his fervent push against romanticised pastoralism, with an insistence that serious attention must be accorded to the cultural systems that are repeatedly dismissed as mere superstition. The balance he proposes, through the rigorous historical method alongside a respectful engagement with modern realities, is not only superficial but contestable. Yet, it offers possible solutions to years of academic neglect. To convince future critics and establish itself as a necessary field of study, AAS’s ability to negotiate the tension between sustaining cultural continuity and subjecting inherited claims to critical scrutiny, lies at the heart of its work.

The methodological implication of African Ancestral Studies, as Falola envisages it, is that they must be synergistic. There will be linguists, archaeologists, ethnomusicologists, theologians, and practitioners of indigenous knowledge systems working in close alliance with historians. However, the study of this material will also require social scientists to design research instruments to “capture ritual practices and oral genealogies” and evaluate this using the same database and academic standards for archival materials.

Professor Falola’s proposal invites a broader reflective question for African scholarship. It enquires into the concepts of decolonisation and their true meanings in practice. Falola’s African Ancestral Studies is a long-term project. Its success primarily lies in the willingness of many scholars, institutions, and financiers to commit to building the platform needed to sustain such intellectual production. The fruition of this project in the long run will become the test of African resilience in reshaping its own narratives.

Falola is calling for an eclectic, interdisciplinary approach to address the problem. It is not more than the recognition that ancestral claims hinge on practices, objects, and oral forms that were not, or did not end up, in the archives of colonial administrations. Training will be needed to enable participants to learn how to triangulate evidence, write reports, and make recommendations acceptable to academic and non-academic audiences, if the programme is to succeed.

The stakes of this project are not merely academic. There are equally tangible civic inclinations to the work of AAS. For one, promoting curricula that ignore ancestral frameworks risks estranging citizens from their ancestral heritage. By implication, a successful AAS project could provide essential tools to reconcile civic expectations, preserve cultural heritage, and promote culturally sound development strategies. The idea is that projects like AAS would serve as the conduit for policymakers to make meaningful use of this work for social development.

Finally, Falola’s proposal invites a broader reflective question for African scholarship. It enquires into the concepts of decolonisation and their true meanings in practice. Falola’s African Ancestral Studies is a long-term project. Its success primarily lies in the willingness of many scholars, institutions, and financiers to commit to building the platform needed to sustain such intellectual production. The fruition of this project in the long run will become the test of African resilience in reshaping its own narratives.

In summary, while Professor Toyin Falola’s visibility and stature lend this project weight, it will succeed if it commits to interdisciplinary methods that place ancestral knowledge on the same evidentiary plane as textual and archival sources.

It is indeed an honour that Lead City University is celebrating its first Emeritus Professor in the Humanities in January 2026.

Samson O. Ijaola is the Head of Department of Religious Studies, Lead City University, Ibadan.