Professor Hakim Adi is a British-Nigerian historian and scholar who specializes in African affairs. He is the first historian of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain. He has written extensively on Pan-Africanism, the contemporary political history of Africa, and the African diaspora. His published works include West Africans in Britain 1900–1960: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism (1998), Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919–1939 (2013), Pan-Africanism: A History, and his latest book African and Caribbean People in Britain (2022) has been shortlisted for the 2023 Wolfson History Prize.
Professor Adi has held speaking engagements in China and the USA. He has worked with museums and archives and authored three history books for children. He is the founder of the Young Historians Project, a non-profit organisation, encouraging young historians of African and Caribbean heritage in Britain. In August 2023, Adi delivered the annual Dorothy Kuya Slavery Remembrance Memorial Lecture for National Museums Liverpool, on the subject of overcoming racism through transformative education. Between 2012 – 2023, Hakim Adi was Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester.
Refs: Life and times of Britain’s first black History professor, Hakim Adi (younghistoriansproject.org)
Photography: Joseph Obasi @jaybright_studio1
