UNIOSUN Staff Profile
Discover the People Behind Our Academic Excellence.
DECKER Babatunde J
Professor
COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES & CULTURE
HIST. & INTERL STUDIES
Brief Educational Profile
Tunde Decker is Professor of African Social History and Everyday Life and Dean, Faculty of Humanities, Osun State University. His research cuts across Social History, Sociology, Social Psychology and Anthropology. Particularly, he studies the thoughts, emotions, self-apprehensions and memory of everyday people in colonial and postcolonial periods and examines how these people engage society in their consciousnesses. Broadly, he is interested in Colonial History, History of poverty, Aviation and Urban and African Studies. His researches have been funded by the Leventis Foundation in London, the Africa-Oxford Initiative in Oxford, the Urban Studies Foundation in Scotland, the American Council of Learned Societies African Humanities Program in New York, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and the University of Ghana, Legon. He was at different times Visiting Scholar and Guest Lecturer at the African Studies Centre, Oxford University, Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, the Centre for African Studies, SOAS University of London, the African Studies Centre, Cambridge University, the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and the University of Ghana, Legon. He was Head of the Department of History and International Studies from 2017 - 2022. He is author of I Beg to Tell Everyday agency in colonial Lagos 1940-1960, African Humanities Series (2025), A History of Aviation in Nigeria 1925-2005 (2008), Matrix of Inherited Identity: A Historical Exploration of the Underdog Phenomenon in Nigeria's Relationship Strategy 1960-2011 (2016) and co-edited For Nature and For People: The Story of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation since 1980 (2007). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, History in Africa, AFRICA: The Journal of the International African Institute, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Journal of the International Federation for Public History, African Historical Review, the SAGE Encyclopaedia of World Poverty, Vestiges Traces of Record and in a number of other journals. He is at present the Principal Investigator of Nigerian Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Institutional Based Research on the assessment of value preferences among children and adolescents in south-west Nigeria. His inaugural lecture titled Of Selfies and Grand Humanity: Farming the Flipside of History was delivered in January 2026.
Academic Profiles
ORCID
Curriculum Vitae
Selected Recent Publications
Books (sole authored): (2026) Of Selfies and Grand Humanity: Farming the Flipside of History Inaugural Lecture Series 028 Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria. 55p.(2025) ‘I Beg to Tell’ Everyday Agency in colonial Lagos, 1940-1960, African Humanities Series (South Africa: NISC Pty and Routledge, 2025), 225 pp. (2016). Matrix of Inherited Identity: A Historical Exploration of the Underdog Phenomenon in Nigeria’s Relationship Strategies 1960 - 2011, Ibadan: University Press PLC, 226 pp.(2008). A History of Aviation in Nigeria 1925 -2005, Lagos: Dele Davis Publishers, 243 pp.Co-edited:(2025) Studies in Nigerian Peoples and Culture: Strategy for Sustainable Development (co-edited with Ifeyinwa V. Awagu and Perekumah Bright Eregha, (Lagos: Pan Atlantic University Press). 456pp.(2007). For Nature and for People: The Story of Nigerian Conservation Foundation Since 1980, (co-edited with Professor Emmanuel Obot, Dr. Tunde Lawal, Alade Adeleke, Ronke Olubamise and Adetoun Mohammed. Lagos: Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), 199 pp.Special Issue of Journal:(2025) Co-Editor (with Caroline Silveira Bauer, Jerome de Groot and Jimena Perry), “Special Issue on Conservative Public History” International Public History Journal of the International Federation for Public History, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Germany, Vol. 8.No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1515/iph-2025-0035 Q2. Scopus indexed.Articles in Journals:“This good-for-nothing past! The harmony of defective memories among Nigerians”, Practicas da Historia Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past, NOVA School of Sciences and Humanities. (NOVA FCSH) University of Lisbon, Portugal (under peer review). Q2. Scopus indexed.(2025). With Caroline Silveira Bauer, Jerome de Groot and Jimena Perry, “Conservative Public History: Special Section Introduction”, International Public History Journal of the International Federation for Public History, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Germany, Vol. 8 No 2: 83-87. https://doi.org/10.1515/iph-2025-0035 Q2. Scopus indexed.(2025). “Perception and ‘Salvation Government’ in 1940s Lagos petitions”, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Routledge/Taylor and Francis, Vol. 53. Issue 3: 609-627. https://doi.org/:10.1080/03086534.2025.2521369 Q1. Scopus indexed. (2024). “Poverty in Africa: History, Misunderstandings, and the Living”, African Historical Review, UNISA Press/Routledge/Taylor and Francis, Vol. 55, Issue 1: 81-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/17532523.2024.2401672 Q2. Scopus indexed.(2023). “From ‘Bad Samaritans’ to ‘Bad Victims’: A Political Economy of Africa-Nigeria Nexus of Poverty”, Journal of Asian and African Studies, SAGE Publications, California, United States Vol. 58. No 3. pp. 389-400 https://doi.org/10.1177/00219096211069653. Q2. Scopus indexed.(2022). “Girl at the Margin: Historicising Adunni’s Subjective Rendition of Colonial Lagos 1930-1960”. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom. Vol. 92 (Issue 3): 315-333, https://doi:10.1017/S0001972022000304. Q1. Scopus indexed.(2021). “Handwritten in Lagos: Selfhood and Textuality in Colonial Petitions”. History in Africa, Journal of Debates, Methods and Source Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 48: 355-382, https://doi.org/10.1017/hia.2021.4. Q1. Scopus indexed.(2021). “Revisiting the ‘Silent’ Voice of Teenagers in Lagos 1940-1950”. Drumspeak: International Journal of Research in the Humanities, Journal of the Faculty of Arts, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Vol. 5 (No 3): 50-65. https://doi.org/10.47963/drumspeak.v5i3.845 at journal.ucc.edu.gh. (2021). “Memory Marketing and the Statement of the Problem in Nigeria’s Historical Research”, ABIBISEM Journal of African Culture and Civilization. Journal of the Department of History, University of Cape Coast, Ghana, University of Ghana Press, Vol. 9: 78-102.(2021). “Olukoju: A Reminiscence on a Scholar’s Influence”, Lagos Historical Review, Journal of the Department of History and International Studies, University of Lagos, Vol. 21, No 1, 2021. pp. 76-92.(2020). “The Colonial Lagos Boy in the Ibadan Archive: A Review of the Structural Context”. Vestiges: Traces of Record, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford, Oxford: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Vol. 6: 36-47; at http://www.vestiges-journal.info/. Also in https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:34a44dbd-40be-42be-88b2-2ef815fbf963/files/r4q77fs870
Research Interests
Africa's Colonial History, Social and Urban Studies, Poverty in Africa, Everyday Life, Air Transport,