Fisayo Ajala
Fisayo Ajala is a researcher specializing in military sociology, death studies, conflict, peace, and security. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Currently, he is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, England, where he is researching the intersections of grief, death, and armed conflict. His articles and work have appeared in Armed Forces and Society, Critical Military Studies, African Security, The Conversation Africa, Kujenga Armani, and other public scholarship platforms. His primary research interests focus on (1) war and military families, (2) soldiering and combat experiences, (3) Remote Combat and Disembodied Warfare, (4) grief, memory, and remembrance, and (5) research methods.
Between January and March 2024, Fisayo Ajala conducted fieldwork supported by the MaDAf project. This research, conducted across both Southern and Northern Nigeria, examined the combat experiences and psychological realities of Nigerian soldiers involved in fighting Boko Haram. Through in-depth conversations and interviews with active soldiers, officers, and retired military personnel, the project explored how Nigerian soldiers describe and interpret trauma, stress, and the burdens of prolonged warfare. The fieldwork was built on Fisayo Ajala’s earlier presentation at the 2023 European Conference on African Studies (ECAS), titled “The Problem is the Disorder”: Narratives of Post-Traumatic (Combat) stress disorder among Nigerian Soldiers in the Boko Haram War. The conference presentation and the subsequent fieldwork contribute to the broader goal of the ERC MaDAf working group, Questioning Trauma: Psychological and Mental Disorders of African Combatants (20th–21st Centuries), which examines the historical and modern aspects of mental health among African military personnel.
While the analysis and writing of the research are ongoing, aspects of the fieldwork findings have been presented at the Questioning Trauma workshop (March 2024) and the Canadian Conference on African Studies (June 2025). Additionally, Fisayo Ajala is serving, alongside Camille Evrard, as a co-editor of a Cahiers d’études africaines special issue focused on war trauma among African combatants from the 20th to the 21st centuries. This special issue brings together interdisciplinary contributions that critically examine how African soldiers have experienced, interpreted, and coped with psychological distress across different historical periods and conflicts.