Abubakar Sadiq Abdulkadir

Abubakar Sadiq Abdulkadir is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow whose research examines the Arabo-Islamic intellectual history, with particular focus on the Mauritanian Sahara and the broader Muslim West African region. His work also engages decolonial thought, translation studies, and manuscript culture. He holds a PhD in History from the University of Alberta and pursued extensive training in Arabic and Islamic sciences with scholars across the Middle East and West Africa, from whom he received traditional teaching diplomas (ijāzāt).

During his fellowship, Abubakar will benefit from faculty mentorship and professional development to advance his academic career, while also transforming his doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript for publication with a major academic press. His PhD research was a historical investigation into the influential Arabic poetry tradition of the Mauritanian Sahara—a tradition that both embodies and popularizes the intellectual legacy of Saharan and West African Muslim scholars—and examined its role in shaping the culture of Islamic scholarship in the region and across Muslim West Africa. He will also be developing a monograph critically examining the Mauritanian distinctive tradition of composing and adapting Qur’anic exegesis into verse, alongside the manuscripts associated with it.

• Awarded the Faculty of Humanities Dean’s Awards for Academic Excellence during BA (Hons) and MA at the University of Johannesburg
• Awarded the Vanier Graduate Scholarship (VGS) and the President’s Doctoral Prize of Distinction at the University of Alberta, Canada