Tejumola Olaniyan is Louise Durham Mead Professor of English, African, and African Diaspora cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He received his BA and MA from the Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, and PhD from Cornell University.

He taught at the University of Virginia from 1991 to 2001. Olaniyan has been at UW Madison since 2001 and is currently chair of the Department of African Cultural Studies. He also directs the African Diaspora and the Atlantic World Research Circle (ADAWRC). He has served on the executive boards of the African Studies Association (ASA, 2013-2015) and the African Literature Association (ALA, 2010-2016), and was President of the ALA in 2014-2015.  He is the new Editor in Chief of Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA).

Some of his authored, edited or co-edited books include Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African American and Caribbean Drama (Oxford UP, 1995); Arrest the Music! Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics (Indiana UP, 2004); African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory (Blackwell, 2010); Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique (Duke UP, 2016); and State and Culture in Postcolonial Africa: Enchantings (Indiana UP, 2017). He also runs the comprehensive web encyclopedia, africacartoons.com.