Titilola Somotan

Halimat Somotan is a social historian who studies the often-overlooked contributions of everyday urban dwellers to making cities more livable. A historian of twentieth-century Africa, her research focuses on decolonization, postcolonial rule, urban history, and women’s history. Her current book manuscript, The Decolonizing City: Popular Politics and the Making of Postcolonial Lagos, 1941-76, examines how tenants, women traders, and homeowners challenged policies like urban renewal that threatened their continued presence from the end of colonial rule to the rise of military rule in Lagos, Nigeria. The project offers a new history of African decolonization by shifting attention from nationalist elites toward urban political engagements and residents’ visions for the future. Drawing from wide-ranging archival sources and oral interviews, The Decolonizing City uncovers residents’ struggles and unrealized aspirations that shaped Lagos’ postcolonial governing structure and laws. Somotan’s research has been supported by fellowships from Carnegie Mellon University; the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities and the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute’s Predoctoral Fellowship, among others. 

Somotan is an Assistant Professor of African Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she teaches courses on urban history, archival methods, West African history, and decolonization. Her publications have explored topics such as cemetery preservation, neighborhood formation, and popular protests against urban displacements. Her work has appeared in venues such as The Journal of Urban History, Time Magazine, and The Conversation. In addition to her research, she manages a digital primary source database on Lagos history. Born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria, Somotan earned her Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and her B.A. in history and theater arts from Fairfield University.