Bridging the Gap Between Gown and Town

Reviewers’ Committee – Biographies

‘Funmi Adewole is a senior lecturer in Dance at De Montfort University, England. She is also a performer, dramaturge, and dance researcher. She holds an MA in Postcolonial studies and PhD in Dance Studies. On relocating from Nigeria to Britain in 1994 she began a career in the arts which included tours with Physical theatre and African dance drama companies and arts consultancy. Her work as a dance advocate contributed to the development of infrastructure for the Dance of the African Diaspora in professional and academic contexts in the UK.  In 2019, she was given a life-time achievement award her work by One Dance UK, the UK National body for Dance. She has an international reputation as a facilitator and speaker and has participated in conferences and led workshops, labs and discussion groups in West Africa, South Africa, Europe, Canada and the USA.  She works as a dramaturge with dancers and makers who combine forms and genres. She designed and co-led the 2018 dramaturgy workshop for Pan-African Creative Exchange (PACE) for choreographers and artistic directors from West and South Africa in Bloemfontein, South Africa in 2019, and co-designed and co-led with Erwin Maas the 2021 the online dramaturgy workshop for participants from Africa and the Diaspora. Her present research interests include dance as a profession, storytelling as performance, the Dance of Africa and the diaspora in the cultural and creative industries and postcolonial inquiry in practice as research.

Jeleel Olasunkanmi Ojuade is a Professor of Performance and Cultural Studies with particular emphasis in Dance Studies and Practice. He holds a Ph.D in Performance Studies (Dance) from the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His other qualifications include LL.B (Hons) in Common Law and LL.M with emphasis in Copyright Laws from the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. He was called into the Nigerian Bar in 2009.  Additionally, he has a Master's in Business Administration from the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. He is into active practice, propagation, and sustenance of Nigerian Dance Culture. 

Jeleel started his dance career with his father’s troupe, Ojuade and his Dance Group at a very tender age of four (4) in the early 1970s, when he featured in local, state, national and international performances and competitions. A culture that he has been able to sustain for about five decades. He belongs to a number of National and International organizations. He was a member (the youngest) of the Nigerian troupe (The National Theatre of Nigeria) that represented the country at the XII Commonwealth Games and Warana Festival in Brisbane, Australia (1982) and in a performance tour of the Federal Republic of South Korea in 1983. He participated in the International Summer School at the Department of Theatre Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (2007). He was a guest lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (2010); the Walter Rodney Lecture Series at the Boston University, Boston, MA (2010) and the African and African American Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA in 2012 where he delivered a lecture on Music and Dance in Africa. 

He has attended and presented academic papers at Local, National and International conferences where his works have been published with particular emphasis on Yoruba Bata and Dundun. He was the President, Association of Dance Scholars and Practitioners of Nigeria (ADSPON). He was an Assistant Director at the Centre for International Education (CIE) and the Director, Advancement Centre (The Vice-Chancellor’s Office), University of Ilorin, Nigeria.

He has also facilitated Partnerships, Collaborations, Relationships and Alliances between and among individuals, organizations, and countries with the University of Ilorin, Nigeria.

Professor Jeleel Ojuade teaches Dance and Theatre related courses in the Performing Arts Department, Faculty of Arts, University of Ilorin. He was, until his appointment as Vice - Chancellor, Ojaja University (formerly CrownHill University (CHU)) on Sabbatical at the Department of Performing Arts and Film Production, Faculty of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences, Kwara State University, Malete,  Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria, where he was also the Director, Advancement Centre as well as the Head, Performing Arts and Film Production department.

See audio visuals of Jeleel Ojuade on: https://youtu.be/S4MhT_b3zUs Ojuade Bata Dance; Jeleel Ojuade Dundun Dance and www.jeleelojuade.org.ng

Amy Swanson (she/her/hers) is Assistant Professor of Dance at Colgate University.  Her research aims to amplify the critical work of artists from formerly colonized locations while fleshing out the transnational entanglements that sustain contemporary dance. Her current book project examines queer aesthetics in contemporary dance in Senegal vis-à-vis artists' embeddedness in both local and transnational artistic milieus. Her writing has appeared in Dance Research Journal, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, and Critical African Studies. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (2022) and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2015). She previously taught at Northwestern University, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. She holds a B.F.A. in dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.