Karin Barber

Barber has held senior positions with the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. She was a member of the council from 2007 to 2008, and was its Vice-President (Humanities) from 2008 to 2010.

In 2003, Barber was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to African studies and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to the study of African culture.

In addition to her full-time academic positions, Barber has held a number of visiting appointments. For the 1993/1994 academic year she was Preceptor of the Institute of Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities at Northwestern University in Illinois, United States. In 1999, she was Melville Herskovits Distinguished Visiting Professor at Northwestern University. In 2014, she was the Mellon Foundation Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

In 1991, Barber was awarded the "Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology" by the Royal Anthropological Institute for I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town, her first book. In 2001, she was awarded the "Melville J. Herskovits Award" by the African Studies Association for The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theatre. In 2009, she was awarded the "Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form" by the Media Ecology Association for The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics. In 2013, she was awarded the "Paul Hair Prize" by the African Studies Association for Print Culture and the First Yoruba Novel.

From 1977 to 1984, Barber was a lecturer in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Ife in Nigeria. Yoruba, which she had learnt during her doctorate, was used as the medium of instruction. In 1985, she moved back to the United Kingdom and joined the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham. She was a lecturer from 1985 to 1993, a senior lecturer from 1993 to 1997, and then Reader from 1997 to 1999. From 1998 to 2001, she served as Director of the Centre of West African Studies. In 1999, she was appointed Professor of African Cultural Anthropology. She retired from Birmingham in 2017, and was appointed professor emeritus. Since 2018, she has been Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

Dame Karin Judith Barber, DBE, FBA (born 2 July 1949) is a British cultural anthropologist and academic, who specialises in the Yoruba-speaking area of Nigeria. From 1999 to 2017, she was Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Before joining the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham, she was a lecturer at the University of Ife in Nigeria. Since 2018, she has been Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

Barber was born on 2 July 1949 to Charles and Barbara Barber. She was educated at Lawnswood High School, an all-girls state grammar school in Lawnswood, Leeds. She studied English at Girton College, Cambridge, and graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree; as per tradition, her BA was promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Cantab).