Taiwo Bello

I am an Assistant Professor of African History and an affiliate faculty member of the Africana Studies Centre at Oklahoma State University. Prior to joining OSU, I was a Faculty of Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow in African and African Diaspora History at the University of Toronto, where I obtained my PhD as a Carmen Brock Fellow in sub-Saharan African History, Vanier/SSHRC Scholar, and a Professor Emeritus Martin Klein Fellow in African History. My research and teaching interests encompass gender and women's history, war and society, violence and conflict studies, the history of crime, law, and punishment, Black and diaspora studies, genocide, human rights, and humanitarian histories, as well as global and transnational history.

My forthcoming book, Inventing Order: Crime, Law, and Punishment in Nigeria and the Diaspora (University of Rochester Press), adopts a multidisciplinary approach to examine the evolution of crimes (armed robbery, immigration fraud, financial fraud, drug trafficking) in Nigeria and their local and global implications. Inventing Order demonstrates how crimes orchestrated by Nigerians shaped the societies of the United States, India, and the United Kingdom, as well as the legal, diplomatic, technological, and social investments and responses of the American, Indian and British governments to the menace, particularly in the twentieth century. My second book will be published by Ohio University Press. Entitled Soldiers on Rampage: Gender, Violence and Resistance in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970, the book examines the impact of the wartime violence between the Nigerian and Biafran soldiers on Biafran women and their families, and the women's responses to wartime atrocities. Adopting a global approach, the book also explores the roles of the Cold War powers (Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union) in the conflict and the implications of their interventions on Biafran women. The book demonstrates how food was central to the constant violence unleashed on women in the heartland of Biafra. 

I am working on several book projects, including an exploration of how Nigeria's transnational diplomacy shaped and sustained the armed resistance of the African liberation guerrillas, wartime refugees' resettlement and experiences in Africa, and the efforts of American organizations in decolonization, anti-imperialism, and deracialization processes in Africa throughout the twentieth century. 

I have published extensively on the above themes in specialist, multidisciplinary, and area studies journals, including War and Society, The International History Review, the Journal of World History, Gender & History,  Africa Today, Journal of Globalization Studies, War in History, The Journal of Global South Studies, The Canadian Historical Review, and Journal of History. 

In 2025, I received an Honourable Mention from the Canadian Association of African Studies for the Pius Adesanmi Early Career Research Excellence Award. My research has been supported by grants from the Society for Military History (SMH), the Royal Historical Society (RHS), Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Library & Archives Scholar Research Support, and Northwestern University’s Melville J. Herskovits Library Research Grant.  

I serve on the Editorial Review Boards of the African Studies Association journal, History in Africa, published by Cambridge University Press; and the Canadian Association of African Studies journal, the Canadian Journal of African Studies, published by Taylor & Francis. I have recently been invited by the International Institute of Genocide and Human Rights Studies to serve as a founding editor of Scholar’s Corner, a subsidiary blog of the journal, Genocide Studies International, published by University of Toronto Press. 

I am the current President of the African Military Studies Association (AMSA), a coordinate organization of the African Studies Association. I am a fellow of the Society for Military History (SMH) and an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (RHS).