Olufemi Vaughan is a Nigerian academic whose research and teaching focuses on African political and social history, African Politics, Diaspora Studies, African Migrations and Globalization, Religion and African States. He is currently the Alfred Sargent Lee ’41 and Mary Ames Lee Professor of African Studies at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Vaughan teaches courses that cover a wide range of issues in African studies across the humanistic social sciences. These issues include African political and social history since the nineteenth century; Atlantic slavery and African societies; politics and economics in colonial and postcolonial Africa; religion and state formation in Africa; African migrations and globalization; African diaspora studies.
Over the years, Vaughan’s research has revolved around the following major issues in African historical, political, and sociological studies: state-society relations in Africa; colonial African societies; politics and society in post-colonial African states; traditional political and social structures in modern Africa; African migrations, transnationalism, and globalization; religion and state formation in Nigeria; literacy, kinship, and elite consolidation in modern Nigeria.