Additional Appointments
Affiliate Faculty, African Studies Program Affiliate Faculty, Banks Center for Educational Justice
Research Interests
Lakeya (Omogun) Afolalu
Lakeya Afolalu, Ph.D. is a Scholar of Language, Literacy, and Culture specializing in the intersections of immigration, race, and identity. Raised between her Nigerian and African American cultures, her hybrid identity is reflected in her scholarship that focuses on African immigrant youth. Specifically, Lakeya explores the role of multilingualism, literacy, including digital literacies, in African immigrant youths' identity constructions across home, school, and digital spaces. She pays particular attention to how the United States' system of racialization and racial categories influence their identity constructions and negotiations. Interdisciplinary in nature, Lakeya's scholarship emphasizes the rich diversity within Black youth identities, languages, and literacies.
Critical to Lakeya's research is her development of practices as well as school and community-based partnerships to support youth of color identities and well-being. She draws on her lived experiences, the wisdom of her former middle school students, and the arts to inform her approach to shifting static ideas about identity.
Her academic scholarship has appeared in Teachers College Record and Journal of Literacy Research and has been supported by The National Council of Teachers of English and The Literacy Research Association. Her public scholarship has been featured on various formats, including TEDx, ESSENCE Magazine, and NPR Radio.
Multimedia
- Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Fellowship (ECEOC), National Council of Teachers of English (2024 – 2026)
- Resilience and Compassion SEED Grant, University of Washington Resilience Lab and Campus Sustainability Fund (2024 - 2025)
- Scholars of Color Transitioning into Academic Research Institutions Fellow (STAR), Literacy Research Association (2022 – 2024)
- Outstanding Dissertation Award, Bilingual Education Research SIG, American Educational Research Association (2022)
- Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color Fellow (CNV), National Council of Teachers of English (2020 – 2022)
- Texas New Scholars Fellowship, Department of Teaching & Curriculum, The University of Texas at Austin (2016 – 2019)
(Formerly known as "Omogun". If you'd like to read a copy and/or need access, email me: lafolalu@uw.edu)
- Afolalu, L. (2024). I'm Still Nigerian: Navigating Race Through Digital Literacies. Journal of Literacy Research, 56(3).
- Afolalu, L. (2024). Opening Space to Participate: One Nigerian Girl’s Use of Visual Arts to Navigate School-Based Linguistic Discrimination. In Watson, VM., Knight-Manuel, M. & Smith, P. (Eds.), Educating African Immigrant Youth: Schooling & Civic Engagement in K-12 Schools, Teachers College Press.
- Omogun, L. & Skerrett, A. (2021). From Haiti to Detroit Through Black Immigrant Languages and Literacies. Journal of Literacy Research, 53(3), 406-429.
- Omogun, L. (2021). Counterstories: Reimagining Youth In Multiethnic Short Story Anthologies [Review of the Book Black Enough: Stories Of Being Young & Black in America edited by I. Zoboi]. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(5).
- Johnston, K., Omogun, L. & Lee, C. (2021). From New York City to the World: Examining Critical Global Literacies in an English Language Arts Classroom. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 35(2), 215-230.
- Skerrett, A. & Omogun, L. (2020) When Racial, Transnational, and Immigrant Identities Meet: Black Youth of Caribbean Origin Speak. Teachers College Record, 122(13).
- Omogun, L. (2018). Immigrant Student Identities In Literacy Spaces. Texas Education Review, 6(2), 70-81.
