Nwando Achebe (pronounced: Wan-do Ah-chě-bě; [pronunciation key: ě as in pet]) is an award-winning author and Professor of History at Michigan State University. She is the founding editor-in-chief of the new Journal of West African History (maiden issue, spring 2014), to be published by Michigan State University Press, in collaboration with Michigan State African Studies Center and The History Department. Dr. Achebe received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000. In 1996 and 1998, she served as a Ford Foundation and Fulbright-Hays Scholar-in-Residence at The Institute of African Studies and History Department of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her research interests involve the use of oral history in the study of women, gender, and sexuality in Nigeria. Her first book, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 was published by Heinemann in 2005. Professor Achebe’s second book, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011), winner of The Barbara “Penny” Kanner and Gita Chaudhuri Book Awards, is a full length critical biography on the only female warrant chief and king in all of colonial Nigeria, and arguably British Africa. The writing was funded by a generous grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. In addition to the Wenner-Gren, Dr. Achebe has received a number of other prestigious grants including awards from Woodrow Wilson, Fulbright-Hays, Ford Foundation and the World Health Organization. In the summer of 2013, Professor Achebe will be directing an NEH funded “Africa in World History” Institute for High School Teachers. She recently spoke to Lisa Heinemann of the New Books Network as well as Peter Limb and Peter Alegi of Africa Past and Present podcast about her critical biography, The Female King.
