Justine Adetola (Tola) Ajao

Justine Adetola Ajao (Tola) is a flex-time PhD student at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on Africa Diaspora epistemologies and agency in agriculture and metallurgy in the 18th and 19th centuries. By exploring the movement of Senegambian technologies in rice and iron in the Atlantic plantation complex, she interrogates the archive of enslavement and aims to historicize the role of African knowledge in the creation of modernity. In 2023 she published an online annotated bibliography for an Antiracist History of Technology for the Society for the History of Technology and has presented her work at various international conferences. In 2025 she was awarded the 18th Century Africa Fellowship by the American Society for Eighteenth Century History and the African Studies Association. Prior to beginning research in the History of Technology, Tola obtained an MPhil in French and Spanish comparative literature at the University of Cambridge and worked in exhibition curation and documentary film in the UK and Brazil. Tola is also a public High School teacher in Toronto where she teaches English, History and Theory of Knowledge.