Toyin Falola is Professor of History, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, and the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, at the University of Texas at Austin. He had served as the General Secretary of the Historical Society of Nigeria, the President of the African Studies Association, Vice-President of UNESCO Slave Route Project, and the Kluge Chair of the Countries of the South, Library of Congress. He is a member of the Scholars' Council, Kluge Center, the Library of Congress. He has received over thirty lifetime career awards and thirteen honorary doctorates. He has written extensively on Nigeria, including A History of Nigeria (2008), Nigerian Political Modernity (2016), Violence in Nigeria (1998), Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria (2009) and co-author of The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present (2019). He is also the series co-editor for Cambridge University Press's series African Identities.