Olivette Otele

Distinguished Professor of Legacies & Memory Slavery at SOAS University of London

Bio

Olivette Otele, PhD, FRHistS, FLSW, is a Distinguished Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at SOAS, University of London. Her area of research are colonial, post-colonial history, the histories of people of African descent and memory studies. 

Otele holds a Ph.D. in History and a BA in American and British Literature from Université Paris La Sorbonne, France. She received an honorary doctorate in Law from Concordia University in Canada in 2022. She is a Fellow and former Vice President of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, UK. She was a judge of the International Man Booker Prize, has written numerous scholarly papers and books, and she is also a regular contributor to the media in Britain and France.

Otele is a broadcaster and a consultant for films and documentaries amongst the recent ones, Chevalier (April 2023) and African Queens on Netflix. She works with institutions researching their historical ties with slavery and help shape their restorative justice strategies. Her latest books include an edited volume, Post- Conflict Memorialization: Missing Memorials, Absent Bodies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and African Europeans: an Untold History (Basic Books, 2022)