University of Ibadan, UI, Professor Aderemi Raji-Oyelade has been announced as a winner of the Humboldt Alumni Award 2017 for Innovative Networking Initiatives.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation grants up to four Humboldt Alumni Awards per year to promote innovative networking initiatives of alumni of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s fellowship and award programmes.
The award is granted in recognition of a researcher’s entire achievements to date to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.
In a statement by the General Secretary of the Foundation, Dr Enno Aufderheide, “This award shall give you the opportunity to implement your proposed networking initiative as well as contribute to support sustainable academic and cultural relations between Germany and your home country and to strengthen the regional alumni network. I would like to offer my congratulations on this exceptional achievement.”
Remi Raji’s award-winning project is entitled “Postproverbial Africa: Building a Corpora of Wits in Texts, Media and Performance”, a trans-national initiative which brings African scholars in the humanities together with the ultimate aim of contributing to the body of modern and radical proverbs which are created mainly in urban communities almost all over the African continent.
The Humboldt Alumni Award ceremony will take place in June 2017 during the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Annual Meeting in Berlin.
Remi-Raji, an orator and a poet is a Salzburg Fellow and visiting professor at a number of institutions including Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, the Universities of California at Riverside and Irvine, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and Cambridge University, UK.
His scholarly essays have published in journals including Research in African Literatures and African Literature Today. Remi Raji who served as the Writer to the City of Stockholm, Sweden in 2005 had read his poems widely in Africa, Europe and America.
His volumes of poetry which have been translated into French, German, Catalan, Swedish, Ukrainian, Latvian and Hungarian include: Webs of Remembrance (2001), Shuttlesongs America: A poetic guided tour (2003), Lovesong for My Wasteland (2005), Gather My Blood Rivers of Song (2009) and Sea of My Mind (2013).
Remi Raji, a chieftain of the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, was the former publicity secretary, Vice Chairman, and chairman of the Oyo State chapter, 11th president of the association, served as the Year 2000 Editor of the ANA Review, the official journal of the association. He was also the former National Coordinator of the resuscitated Nigerian PEN Centre.
Source: MyEfiko.com