‘Imagine Lagos’ wins inaugural Alison Isenberg Prize for Best Book on Urban Placemaking

“Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City” by Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi has received the inaugural Alison Isenberg Prize for Best Book on Urban Placemaking from the Urban History Association, recognizing an outstanding contribution to the study of how people create, inhabit and transform urban spaces.

In announcing the award, the prize committee praised “Imagine Lagos” as “a book of bold imagination” that expands historical methodology through an inventive approach to understanding the spatial dimensions of nineteenth-century Lagos during a period of transition from indigenous governance to British colonial rule. The committee highlighted Adelusi-Adeluyi’s innovative practice of “walking cartography,” which combines historical maps, archival evidence and present-day exploration of the city to reconstruct the lived experience of Lagosians and recover elements of the urban landscape that have disappeared from the historical record.

The Alison Isenberg Prize is the latest recognition for “Imagine Lagos,” which has earned significant acclaim within the fields of African studies, urban history and digital humanities. In 2025, the book received the African Studies Association Best Book Prize, awarded annually to the author of the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English during the preceding year. The book is also currently a finalist for the Outstanding First Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora.

Drawing on historical maps, oral traditions, colonial correspondence, newspapers, court testimony and digital humanities methods, “Imagine Lagos” examines how memory, violence, justice, ownership and belonging shaped the city’s development. The committee also commended Adelusi-Adeluyi’s creation of original maps that layer historical evidence onto contemporary spatial data, allowing readers to visualize nineteenth-century Lagos in new ways and demonstrating how maps can function as historical arguments rather than simple illustrations.

Trained as a historian and a computer engineer, Adelusi-Adeluyi is an associate professor at Howard University, where her research focuses on West African urban history, spatial history, mapmaking and digital humanities. Her scholarship explores the relationship between place, memory and power, with particular attention to the ways historical landscapes can be reconstructed through interdisciplinary methodologies.

“I am so thrilled to receive this prize, given the nature of my research, and my specific desire to narrate and draw the city’s history in ways that make Lagos and Lagosians more legible,” said Adelusi-Adeluyi in an email. She added, “It is bittersweet that it is named after Alison Isenberg, a renowned urbanist who recently passed away. I am grateful for the support from the brilliant and generous Ohio University Press team, who were so critical in shaping this book.”

The impact of “Imagine Lagos” extends beyond the printed page through two digital projects that allow readers to engage directly with the historical geography of Lagos. The companion websites provide access to story maps, historical reconstructions and cartographic materials that support the book’s arguments and make its research accessible to broader audiences.

For more information on the book

You can visit the "Imagine Lagos" project website at: https://www.imaginelagos.com/

You can see the New Maps, Old Lagos here: https://newmapsoldlagos.com/

You can see an open-access edition of the book at: https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/53/

You can find more information about the Ohio University Press here: https://www.ohioswallow.com/