Adunbi is a political and environmental anthropologist whose areas of research explore issues related to governance, infrastructures of extraction, environmental and climate politics, human rights, power, violence, culture, transnational institutions, multinational corporations, and the postcolonial state.
He is a 2016 recipient of the Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award and a 2022 recipient of the John Dewey Award for excellence in teaching, both at the University of Michigan. His book Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2015) won the 2015 Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. His book Enclaves of Exception: Special Economic Zones and Extractive Practices in Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2022) interrogates the idea of free trade zones and its interrelatedness to oil refining practices and infrastructure. His new project is at the intersection of social media, climate change, and the politics of the environment.
Adunbi’s campus involvement also includes teaching in the University’s LSA Honors Program and Program in the Environment, as well as serving as director of the African Studies Center. He is a faculty associate in the University’s Donia Human Rights Center and the Energy Institute.
