Dr. Rosemary Oyinlola Popoola specializes in African and African diaspora studies. As a multidisciplinary scholar whose work sits at the crossroads of multiple fields in social science and humanities, her research focuses on the imbrication of race, gender, and sexuality in Africa and the Diaspora with significant attention to popular, visual, and celebrity culture; Black and African feminisms; sexualities; women’s histories; critical race theory; decolonial studies; postcolonial and global black film and literature; and African and Black Atlantic music. Her work draws on audiovisual sources, including but not limited to music, film, archives, literature, photography, and self-writing, such as biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs.

She earned her first Ph.D. in international relations from Covenant University in 2018. Her first doctoral dissertation, which won the 2019 Best Doctoral Thesis of the Lagos Studies Association, through a feminist lens, examined the complexities of women-centered advocacy and the challenges of disillusionment occasioned by the expectation that democracy will result in gender gains in Nigeria.

Dr. Popoola has transnational teaching experience. She has almost ten years of experience teaching and researching in higher education in Nigeria. Her classes focused on gender and its intersection with various subjects such as history, politics, technology, environment, international relations, institutions, and human rights. In the United States, as a principal instructor, she taught multiple classes that explored Africa in postcolonial films and literature, feminism in African film and literature, queer representation and lived experiences in African and Black cultural productions, and an introduction to African cultural expression. She also worked as a teaching assistant for classes on Introductory Survey to Africa, African Storyteller, Introduction to African Literature, and Introduction to African Cultural Expression.

Dr. Popoola’s work has been published in many reputable journals, including the Journal of African Cultural Studies, the Journal of Cultural Research, Women Studies International Forum, Feminist Africa, the Canadian Journal of African Studies, and the Journal of Asian and African Studies, among others.

Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from prestigious institutions such as the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Laurete, the Carnegie-supported 2018 Early Career Fellowship (ECF) at the African Doctoral Academy, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, the Ebrahim Hussein Fellowship 2024, and the Aliko Songolo Summer Research Award 2024. UW-Madison Graduate School, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Fellowship Fall 2023, The Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Funding Student Research Grants Competition - Conference Presentation Award 2022, among many others.

Dr. Popoola organized panels on fame, fandom, celebrities, politics, and the economics of attention in African popular culture for three consecutive years at the Lagos Studies Association Annual Conference, one of the biggest academic gatherings on the continent.

Beyond research, Dr. Popoola has served in various capacities. She served briefly as the International Office and Linkages coordinator at Chrisland University, Nigeria, and Secretary of the International Organizing Committee at Covenant University 2018 Workshop on Gender Mainstreaming in Higher Education and Forensic Victimology; Assistant Cluster Head, Gender, Peace & Conflict Resolution 2016-2019 at Covenant University. She was featured as a panelist and discussant at the United Nations Day series on Gender and Human Rights (2019, 2020) organized by the United Nations Association of Nigeria (UNAN) in collaboration with the United Nations Information Centre Nigeria. She also participated as a discussant at the African Feminist Initiative Conference at Pennsylvania State University.

Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in African Cultural Studies with a doctoral minor in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her second doctoral dissertation read the history of popular music against the grain by emphasizing women, non-binary, and queer artists who have historically been marginalized, reclaiming their voice, agency, and resistance against heteropatriarchal, hegemonic masculinity, and heteronormativity in the social production and scholarship of popular music in Nigeria, West Africa.