Varsity hosts first research fellow

Koladaisi University, Ibadan, has shored up its bar of acceptance and international acclaim by hosting the institution’s first Research Fellow, Mr. Colin Bos, from the United States (U.S.).

The historic research fellow who is a doctoral student of the Department of History at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University, USA, has a focus in West African intellectual history, indigenous medicine and healing culture.

During his four weeks stint in KolaDaisi University, Ibadan, Bos probed the ‘role of textuality and orality in healing cultures’, as well as the interaction between biomedicine and social perspectives to health issues at the indigenous level, towards unravelling West Africans’ attitudinal dispositions to science, medicine and diseases. 

While giving further insight into his study, Bos disclosed that he delved into African history as a motivation for the shame he felt for his ignorance about African history against the reality of some indigenous African practices such as Ifa divination, which he rated to be enjoying wider acceptance, to the extent of becoming transatlantic phenomena.

“One thing that has motivated my research was the shame I felt in knowing so little about African history and Africa’s many and diverse cultures. It was disturbing to me when I first studied African history; how this had never been presented to me before even though I had learnt so much about the history of everywhere else”.

Bos, who could not hide his admiration of the richness of the African culture, summed his observation that many of the cultures were shrouded in much mystery, especially those of the Yoruba extraction.