Shalom Ìbírónkẹ́

Biography

Shalom Success Ìbírónkẹ́ is a Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts at Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State, Nigeria. He holds a PhD in Theatre Arts from Redeemers' University, Ede, an MA in Theatre Arts from the University of Ibadan, and a BA in Performing Arts from Kwara State University. His doctoral research examined the management of disability inclusion within Nigeria's creative industry, a concern that continues to anchor his scholarship.

His work sits at the intersection of theatre management, disability studies, and African performance traditions. He writes on applied theatre as a tool for university social responsibility, the semiotics of Yorùbá performance art, and the governance of cultural institutions for sustainable development, with essays appearing in journals such as Performance Philosophy, Religion and the Arts, and the Polish Journal of Aesthetics. As Principal Investigator on a Bowen University research grant, he led an interdisciplinary, arts-based study reconstructing disability narratives among Yorùbá communities in South-West Nigeria through theatre, music, and film.

Beyond research, he is a published playwright and theatre director. His play Home Won't Build Itself (2023) addressed the Nigerian and African brain drain crisis, and he has directed or produced more than a dozen stage productions, including works by Wole Soyinka, Zulu Sofola, and Femi Osofisan. He has presented his research at conferences across Nigeria and abroad, most recently at the Lagos Studies Association conference in Lagos and a workshop on independence movements in Lisbon.

Project Information

Project Title: Staging the Global South: Cultural Policy, Participatory Performance, and Africa's Entanglements in International Creative Economies

Mentored by Professor ally walsh at the University of Leeds, this project examines how participatory performance traditions in Nigeria, particularly Yorùbá theatre and applied performance, entangle with global cultural policy discourses, international development agendas, and transnational creative networks. Scholarship on cultural policy and participation has long been shaped by Euro-American frameworks that overlook how African institutions, artists, and communities negotiate global creative economies on their own terms.

Building on my doctoral research on disability inclusion in the Nigerian creative industry and published work on Yorùbá aesthetics and cultural management, the project draws on the critical insights of Leeds's Participation and Engagement Research Group, whose work on the "participation myth" has shown how structural inequities, including those around disability, are often masked behind narratives of inclusion.

The research proceeds in three strands: a theoretical synthesis of cultural policy literature against African creative sector realities; an analysis of policy documents and evaluation reports from bodies such as the British Council and EU Creative Europe, to interrogate whose definitions of "participation" govern transnational cultural partnerships; and a critical reading of my own practice-based theatre work as a site of alternative participatory logic. Together these strands will generate an Africa-centred framework for understanding cultural entanglement and disability inclusion.

The project speaks directly to the fellowship's theme of Africa's entanglements in a global world and its interest in collaboration with the creative and cultural sectors. The intended output is a journal article for the International Journal of Cultural Policy, alongside a scoping exercise toward a larger funded project on participatory theatre in sub-Saharan Africa.