AGBERIA JOHN TOKPABERE

Brief Biography

John Tokpabere Agberia is an artist, designer, curator and art historian. He is the first Professor of Fine Arts and Design in the University of Port Harcourt and was also the First Head of Department of Fine Arts and Design three consecutive times.

Agberia on graduating in 1983 from the University of Benin, Benin City, began his academic career as a Graduate Assistant at the University of Uyo in 1985. He received an MA in Art history degree from University of Ibadan in 1988 and a PhD from the University of Port Harcourt in 1998 with his thesis topic on Art and Religious Symbolism of the Urhobo people. Agberia has received several distinguished
postdoctoral academic scholarship awards from the United Kingdom, which includes the AG Leventis fellowship at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London (1995), Sainsbury Research fellowship award of the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia (1997), and the University of Oxford’s Titular fellowship at the Pitt Rivers Museum (2009). At Oxford Pitt Rivers, he worked with Jeremy Coote, the joint Head of collections, where he began studying museums, cultural heritage, and curating. Agberia has attended many world conferences of art and design in London, New York, Oxford, Berlin/Germany and the popular CAA/Getty conference 2018 in Los Angeles California, USA. He is a tenured Professor of Art and Design at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

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