Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey

Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey (Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè) is Associate Professor of post-Reconstruction U.S. and African Diaspora history and William Dawson Chair.

Dr. Adjetey is working on his second and third book projects on warfare and African-led abolitionism on the Gulf of Guinea Coast, and revolutionary Black organizing and state repression in the United States and Americas, respectively.

Dr. Adjetey’s first monograph is Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America (UNC Press, Jan. 2023). It situates fundamental questions of twentieth-century U.S. history—immigration, civil rights, racial identity, revolution, counter-revolution, imperialism, and neo-colonialism—within a diasporic North American and transatlantic frame. Cross-Border Cosmopolitans is the 2024 winner of the Canadian Historical Association's Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize, which is awarded to a "work of history judged to have made the most significant contribution to an understanding of the Canadian past." It earned Honourable Mention from the Organization of American Historians for its Frederick Jackson Turner Prize, which is given to the best book in American history by a first-time author. It was Finalist for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Book Prize, and designated one of the "Best Black History Books of 2023" by the African American Intellectual History Society.

Cross-Border Cosmopolitans is the result of a major transformation of Dr. Adjetey’s Ph.D. dissertation, which won Yale University’s Edwin M. Small Prize for “outstanding” contribution to U.S. history, Sylvia Ardyn Boone Prize for African American Studies, the Canadian Studies Prize, and the Willard “Woody” Brittain, Jr. Award.

Dr. Adjetey is as dedicated to teaching as he is to research. He is the recipient of McGill University's H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Principal's Prize for Excellence in Teaching. His undergraduate lecture courses and seminars cover U.S., African American, African Canadian, African Diaspora, and global history. He offers graduate seminars on various topics.

An active member of and contributor to several North American historical associations, Dr. Adjetey shares his expertise broadly in service of the profession, including in civil society, where he is a sought after expert in legal proceedings involving African peoples and their justice claims. He has many years of experience as Director on multiple Boards that promote peace-building and equitable educational access, pluralism and impact investing, forestation and poverty alleviation, among other causes, in North America and Africa. He remains a committed public intellectual and frequent contributor to civic discourse, writing many op-eds for periodicals, such as The Washington Post, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Walrus, and more. Before pursuing an academic career, Dr. Adjetey worked in youth gang prevention and intervention in north Toronto and in similar capacities to help Black youth, especially boys and young men, gain a healthy sense of self through an understanding of the African past