Ebenezer Obadare is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He earned his doctorate in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2005, and has undergraduate and graduate degrees in History (1989) and International Relations (1992) respectively from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. A former award-winning journalist, Dr. Obadare's research interests include civil society and the state, religion and politics in Africa, civic service, and citizenship. He has published extensively on these subjects in leading refereed journals, among them Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), African Affairs, Politique Africaine, Journal of Civil Society, Democratization, Patterns of Prejudice, Africa Development, Critical African Studies, Development in Practice, Journal of Modern African Studies, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, and Journal of Church and State. He is the author of Africa Between the Old and the New: The Strange Persistence of the Postcolonial State (2008); Statism, Youth and the Civic Imagination: A Critical Study of the Nigerian National Youth Service Corps 2010); and co-editor of Encountering the Nigerian State (2010), Nigeria at Fifty: The Nation in Narration (2011), and Democracy and Prebendalism in Nigeria: Critical Interpretations (2013).
