- Posted in All University
- Category: Campus News
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PA – The Lincoln University, the nation’s first-degree granting Historically Black College & University, announced it will award Dr. Toyin Falola, the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, an honorary doctorate degree at its 156th Commencement on Friday, May 8 at 9:00 a.m. in the university’s stadium.
Falola, who is one of the most prolific and erudite global scholars of his generation, has published more than 125 books, numerous journal articles and book chapters on Africa and the African Diaspora. Coupled with his high level of international engagement activities and commitment to Pan Africanism, he has become one of the most respected and influential scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries.
“I am deeply humbled and honored to receive such a prestigious honor,” Falola said. “The greatest hope that a scholar can have is to feel that his/her efforts in the academy have been appreciated across time and space.”
Widely proclaimed as Africa’s preeminent historian and one of the major intellectuals of our time, Falola has been invited to speak in all continents and in over sixty countries. He also manages five distinguished scholarly monograph series and serves on the board of over twenty journals.
Falola has received several honorary doctorates, lifetime career awards and honors in various parts of the world, including the Nigerian Diaspora Academic Prize, the Cheikh Anta Diop Award, the Amistad Award, the SIRAS Award for Outstanding Contribution to African Studies, Africana Studies Distinguished Global Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award, Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, Fellow of the Historical Society of Nigeria The Distinguished Africanist Award and three Yoruba chieftaincy titles, most notably the Bobapitan of Ibadanland (“the grand historian of the empire”).
At the University of Texas at Austin, he received the Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence, The Texas Exes Teaching Award, the Chancellor’s Council Outstanding Teaching Award, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, and the Career Research Excellence Award.
In addition, an annual international conference has been named after him, the Toyin Falola Annual Conference on Africa and the African Diaspora (TOFAC), which meets every July in a major African university.