PhD Student Diya Ayobami Awarded Exploration and Field Research Grant

PhD student Diya Ayobami was recently awarded the 2026 Exploration and Field Research Grant by the Explorers Club Washington Group (ECWG) and the Mark Beckler Memorial Fund. His funded project is titled “Upland Landscape and Ancient State Formation in Ekiti, Southwestern Nigeria, 900 AD—1900 AD.” The project focuses on the Ekiti region of Yorubaland in the period dating circa 900 AD to 1800 AD, which Ayobami suggests has been neglected in broader archaeological and historical investigations of Yoruba sociopolitical development. In his words, his project seeks to address and rectify this “historical silence and marginalization in Yoruba historiography by investigating state formation and landscape use in the Ekiti region”, drawing from “archaeological, GIS, material science and ethnographical methods to explore how the inhabitants transformed the conceptual and physical landscape in response to statehood” in the Ekiti region.