Scholarship that builds people, nations, and institutions.
Dr. David Olali is Founder and Director of the Comparative Heritage Project and Comparative Heritage Institute, and served as Academic Professional Associate and Assistant Director of the African Studies Institute at the University of Georgia, where he taught across more than eight departments and served as Interim Director.
Areas of expertise
What the work is about
Trained in religion at Claremont Graduate University (PhD, 2018) after graduate and undergraduate study at the University of Ibadan, his scholarship examines scriptures as social power: how texts, technology and violence shape nationhood, gender, ecology and heritage across Africa and its diaspora.
Work with David
Consulting, speaking and mentorship
Ventures
Institutions and platforms
Lectures
Recent talks
Ideas
Latest writing
Before the Comparison, the Comparer: Comparativity Complex Theory, Its Propositions, Method and Stakes
Comparison is never the first act. Before anyone places two heritages side by side, a history of power has already made them comparable. Comparativity Complex Theory makes that prior history its object.
Diaspora as Summons: Africa, Return, and the Comparativity of Belonging
Diaspora is not a place Africa sent people to. It is a comparativity Africa is continually made to answer to: who counts as African, who may authorize return, and who profits when enslaved heritage is remembered, sold, and made sacred.
Where Power Lives: Scripturalization, the Invention of \"Religion,\" and the African Burden of Comparison
Africa did not ask to be compared. This essay argues that \"religion\" was made to carry that burden, and that power in African religious life lives less in belief than in scripturalization: who makes a text sacred, and who is written out.