About us
The International African Institute (IAI) aims to promote the scholarly study of Africa, its history, societies, cultures, and political systems.
The institute realizes its aims primarily by means of scholarly publishing.
The institute is a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee, managed by a group of trustees. Additionally, an academic council, drawing members from the international African studies community meets annually and provides guidance and make interventions into the work of the institute.
Click here to see a photograph of IAI Council members and officers taken at the AEGIS conference, 2009.
Accessing IAI publications in Africa
The IAI is committed to making its scholarly materials as widely available within Africa as possible. This may be through co-publication, subsidized co-publication, offering favourable rights terms to local publishers, distribution through local publishers on the continent, or charitable donation. Read more ...
The IAI was founded in 1926 in London as the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. Over the years, the IAI has played a pioneering role in promoting African studies through facilitating research, scholarly publishing about Africa, and a variety of other programmes including hosting seminars and lectures. The Institute hosts a biennial lecture, known as the ‘Lugard Lecture’, named in commemoration of Frederick Lord Lugard (1858-1945), who was the inaugural Chairman of the IAI, from its foundation in 1926 to within a few days of his death in 1945.
The principal publications comprise its long established and prestigious journal, Africa; the annual Africa Bibliography, the most comprehensive bibliography, of scholarly books, journal articles and other materials published on Africa each year and the International African Library series which publishes monographs and edited collections by distinguished scholars in the social sciences and humanities; the African Arguments series which addresses leading contemporary issues to a more mainstream audience; and the Readings in... series for use in tertiary level teaching of African studies.
Lugard Lectures
Lugard lecture 2009, by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, ‘Pan-Africanism in the Age of Obama’, available here.
Lugard lecture 2003, by John Middleton, ‘A View of Africa: the International African Institute’, available here.
Council Members and trustees
Chair
Prof. V.Y. Mudimbe
Vice-chair
Prof. Birgit Meyer
Honorary fellows
Prof. J.F. Ade Ajayi
Prof. Murray Last, also a Trustee
Elected members
Prof. Fred Ahwireng-Obeng
Prof Tim Allen
Prof. Kelly Askew
Prof. Richard Banégas
Prof. Leslie Bank
Prof. Filip De Boeck
Prof. George Clement Bond
Prof. Mamadou Diawara
Prof. Andreas Eckert
Prof. Peter Geschiere
Prof. Odile Goerg
Prof. Holger Bernt Hansen
Prof. Isabel Hofmeyr
Dr Mark Horton
Prof. Jok Madut Jok
Prof. Adam T Jones
Dr Célestin Monga
Prof. Ato Quayson
Prof. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Trustees
Prof. J.D.Y. Peel,
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Prof. Philip Burnham, Honorary Director
Dr Elizabeth Dunstan
Prof. Murray Last, also an Honorary Fellow
Robert Molteno
Staff
William Burgess,
Secretary to the Honorary Director
Sue Kibble, Treasurer
Stephanie Kitchen, Chair, Publications Committee
Remembering John Middleton, Honorary Fellow, IAI
John Middleton (1921–2009)
The Institute notes and commemorates the sad and irretrievable loss of John Middleton who passed away on 27 February 2009 at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
John Middleton was professor (emeritus from 1991) of anthropology and religious studies at Yale University. He went to the university’s anthropology department in 1981 as one of the world's most distinguished Africanist scholars, and provided enormous leadership to African studies at Yale during the 1980s. He continued to teach at Yale as a professor emeritus until his death in 2009.
Previously, John had held various distinguished academic posts including in his early career as lecturer in anthropology at the University of London, senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In 1966 he started teaching at New York University, but then was offered a professorship at Yale University, which he accepted. In 1972, Middleton left Yale to accept appointment as professor of African anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. This also enabled him to resume fieldwork which he did in 1976 and 1977 in Ghana. In 1981 he returned to Yale, doing fieldwork in Kenya in 1986.
During his long career, he was a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, the University of Oregon, University of Lagos in Nigeria, and the École pratique des hautes études in Paris.
John Middleton was an Honorary Fellow of the International African Institute, making a vital contribution over several decades in all areas of the Institute activities, notably the International African Seminars programmes, publications, constitution of the Council, and strategy and direction of the Institute. He was Editor of its journal Africa from 1973–79.
John’s work on the Lugbara religion is considered a classic of African anthropology. He maintained a vigorous research and publishing life until his death, playing a leading role, with his colleague and co-editor, Kimani Njogu, in the organisation of an International African Seminar held in Nairobi in 2004 on ‘media and the construction of identity’. He edited the corresponding volume for the publication, Media and Identity in Africa, into what turned out to be the final stages of his life. He passed away just as the book, his last major project on Africa and final intellectual and institutional contribution to the work of the IAI, was going to press.
