Professor Nelson Olabanji Fashina of the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan (UI), has been scheduled to deliver the institution’s 523rd Inaugural lecture on Thursday, May 11, 2023.
The inaugural lecture titled, “Text, Grammatology and the Automation of Theories in (African) Literary Discourse”, will be delivered at the institution’s historic Trenchard Hall.
Fashina, who hails from Owo, Ondo State was born on June 20, 1960.
He obtained his B. A. (Hons.) in English Language and Literature in 1986, from the University of Ado-Ekiti (UNAD), now Ekiti State University (EKSU), and in 1988 and 1994, he obtained M. A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Ibadan, respectively.
He was employed as a Teaching Assistant in 1987 at EKSU, where he steadily rose to the level of a Senior Lecturer in 1996.
He joined UI, the nation’s Premier University in 1998, where he was elevated to the rank of full professor on October 1, 2010.
He was a visiting Exchange Scholar at the University College of Exeter, Plymouth, UK, in 1992, Visiting Senior Lecturer at, the University of Nsukka in 1996, an Adjunct Professor of English at Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo, August 2013, and Visiting/Adjunct Professor, Redeemer’s University, 2014 to date.
He has supervised 15 doctoral students including the current Director of UI Distance Learning Centre (DLC), Professor Babatunde Omobowale, with a thesis titled, “Literature and Medicine: A Study of Selected Creative Works of Nigerian Physicians”.
He is a Professor of English Studies with special faculty in Literary Theory/Criticism (Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Semiotics, Psychoanalysis, Postmodernism, Leavisite criticism, Discourse Hermeneutics, Eco-criticism, Textual Stylistics) and Cultural Studies, African and African Diaspora Literature & Postcolonial Criticism, Foundational research in the philosophy/epistemology of African specific Literary theory & systems of criticism in poetry, drama, and fiction.