Allegra Ayida

Allegra Ayida is a doctoral student in the department of History. Her current research focuses on the longue durée maritime history of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, with a focus on port cities, piracy and palm-oil politics. She is interested in the trade relationships between European and African traders, and the long history of interactions with different European powers through missionary activity along the west African coastline. She also researches the restitution of stolen/looted African artefacts and cultural heritage currently held by European museums.

She is a graduate fellow in the environmental humanities at the Whitney Humanities center at Yale. She also worked at the Yale University Art Gallery as a Graduate Curatorial Intern in African Art. She received a BA in History from Wesleyan University, an MA in World History from Kings’ College London and an Mphil in African Studies from Cambridge University.