Adewumi Damilola Adebayo from York University won the 2024 Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize awarded by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) for his paper “Electricity, Agency and Class in Lagos Colony, c. 1860s–1914,” Past & Present, no. XX (2023).
Adewumi Damilola Adebayo develops an original perspective in a case study of electrification and colonization in West Africa. He offers a well-researched, revisionist portrait of three issues: the study and use of electricity; the role of Africans in influencing installation of British imperial power plants; and the complexity of Nigerian electricity consumption in Lagos, especially along popular and class dimensions.
The Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize is given annually for the best paper published in the history of electrotechnology during the previous year.
