Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin

Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin is the Canada Research Chair in Youth and African Urban Futures and the Queen's National Scholar in Black Geographies with the Departments of Geography & Planning and Gender Studies at Queen’s University. She is a feminist scholar who is interested in place-making and subjectivity through the study of African urbanisms and popular culture. In her ethnographic study of African urbanisms, she is primarily interested in how local engagements with the Africa Rising discourse and global aspects of the neoliberal political economy work together to (re)produce spatial and social inequalities and provoke resistance in African cities. Her research focus on popular culture explores the issues of race and representation; subjectivity and belonging; and the use of Afrofuturism and Afropolitan imagineering in geographic projects that address the colonial politics of difference.

Her current research project explores the relationship between youth, labour and neoliberal urban transformation in Ibadan and Lagos, Nigeria. She is interested in the role that the intersections of neoliberal urban change, global consumer culture and labour play in (re)configuring youth identity and providing opportunities for youth to orientate themselves towards the future.