Ebenezer Obadare (PhD, LSE) is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He is author and editor of several books, including Humor, Silence and Civil Society in Nigeria (2016),The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa (2014), Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21^stCentury (2014), Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Africa: Leadership in Transformation (2016), Nigeria at Fifty: Narrating the Nation (2011), and others. A recipient of numerous prestigious international awards and research grants, he currently sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Civil Society, Review of African Political Economy, Africa, African Conflict & Peace building Review, and The Sociological Quarterly. In August 2017, he begins a five-year tenure as editor of The Journal of Modern African Studies.