Another Nigerian, Tunde Babalola, wins Dan David’s History Prize

Dr. Tunde Abidemi Babalola has been named one of this year’s winners of the prestigious Dan David’s prize, barely two years after another Nigerian won the prestigious Diadem.The Dan David Prize, endowed by the Dan David Foundation and headquartered at Tel Aviv University, is the largest history prize in the world. This year Nine winners from across the world will share the $300,000 prize money.

The Citation on Babalola by the awarding body reads in part, ‘Babalola has used material science to uncover the history of technological development in premodern West Africa..

His research showed that glass production in Africa predated European colonialism and was developed independently. Babalola is active in public outreach in Nigeria, bringing the knowledge he produces through archaeological work to the communities that are connected to this history.

He served as lead archaeologist ahead of construction of the upcoming Museum of West African Arts set to open in Benin City, Nigeria this year.”

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Dr Babalola who currently works with the British Museum as a Researcher is a product of the University of Ibadan. He completed his bachelor’s degree in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts honours Certificate.

Tunde a native of Abeokuta in Ogun State did his Masters at the same Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan with a dissertation on Orile Keesi, Ogun State. The Masters which was completed in 2007 was supervised by Professor Oluwole Ogundele. He followed it up with another master’s at Rice University, USA under the tutelage of Prof Susan McIntosh who also supervised his doctorate at the same University.

His PhD thesis was remarkable as he excavated over 16,000 beads from Igbo-Olokun in Ile -Ife, a site now known to be a major bead production centre in Africa.

Babalola has bagged several awards including the World Archaeological Congress Blaze O Connor award which he got for his outstanding contributions to archaeology at the 9th World Archaeological Congress meeting in Prague, Czech Republic in 2022.