Each year, the British Academy elects up to 52 outstanding UK-based scholars to its fellowship who have achieved distinction in any branch of the humanities and social sciences. Others based overseas can also be elected as Corresponding Fellows, and, in addition, the Academy can elect Honorary Fellows.

Corresponding Fellows are scholars outside the UK who have 'attained high international standing in any of the branches of study which it is the object of the Academy to promote.' Some familiarity with research in the UK is valuable to facilitate a contribution to the work of the Academy, eg, through assessments of candidates for election.

Up to 20 elections are made each year to the Corresponding Fellowship. There are now over 300 Corresponding Fellows.

Chika Okeke-Agulu specializes in indigenous, modern, and contemporary African and African Diaspora art history and theory. Professor Okeke-Agulu teaches a broad range of graduate and undergraduate courses on African and African Diaspora arts. His seminars include "Art and the Lifecycle in Africa," which examines the role of art in rites-of-passage events in various African societies; "Post-1945 African Photography"; "Art and Apartheid in South Africa," which focuses on how art participated in the rise and fall of Apartheid; "Masking and Theory," a study of theories of masking in Africa; "Postblack," on racial identity in the work of contemporary African American artists; and "Art and Politics in Postcolonial Africa," which examines the ways art and artists confront socio-political realities in African after the decade of political independence.