The history department's professor Olutayo Adesina has been chosen to accept one of the highly sought-after British Academy Global Professorships for 2023–2024. The UI Don is one of eight professors chosen worldwide to research a variety of topics, including using food system models to address climate change and examining the history of West African communities via museum holdings.

Aiming to bring globally renowned academics to the UK to work on innovative research initiatives in a wide variety of pertinent areas, the Global Professorships are significant investigator-led grants. The chosen academics get financing of £900,000 for each four-year prize. The subject of Professor Adesina's study will be "the interplay of nationalist historiography, academic social science, and vernacular knowledge as mutually constitutive social epistemologies." He is also the President of the Society of Nigerian Archivists.

He will look at the degree to which indigenous, vernacular epistemologies influenced the work of academic historians and social scientists at the University of Ibadan. Ibadan was a city with a strong and unique intellectual and cultural character. This study examines how academic social science, vernacular knowledge, and nationalist historiography interact to form mutually constitutive social epistemologies for the first time.

The Academy's announcement on UI Don's proposed research stated, "The project combines a close study of key works in history and related disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, ethnomusicology, language, and literature with extensive interviews and fieldwork in the city of Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria."

After receiving his PhD from the history department at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, he joined the University of Ibadan's history department. From 2001 to 2003 and from 2006 to 2008, he was the Head of the Department of History and the Sub-Dean (General) of the Faculty of Arts.

The 2023 British Academy worldwide professorship has been awarded to Abubakar Sani, the former head of Ahmadu Bello University's (ABU) Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies. These lecturers were two of the eight academics chosen to investigate a variety of topics, such as the application of food system models to address climate change and the examination of the historical background of West African communities through museum holdings. Tetyana Antsupova, Paul Behrens, Sandrine Berges, Karine Chemla, Saloumeh Gholami, and Ayelet Landau were among the other chosen scholars.