Dr. Daniel Kodzo Avorgbedor

Dr. Avorgbedor is currently on a post-retirement teaching and research contract at the Institute of African Studies and in the School of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana, Legon. Major research and teaching areas include performance theories, African Diaspora studies, and rural-urban dynamics in reconstructing Ewe cultural and musical identities. Dr. Avorgbedor served as coordinator of the Ethnomusicology program at The Ohio State University, Columbus and held a joint appointment in the Department of African American and African Studies, 1995-2010. Major grants received include Wenner-Gren, H.F. Guggenheim, and NEH (team) awards. In addition to frequent international speaking engagements, Dr. Avorgbedor has published essays in several journals and entries in encyclopedias. He is editor of The Interrelatedness of Music, Religion, and Ritual in African Performance Practice, 2003.

Dr. Solá Adeyemi

Solá Adeyemi was born into an agrarian family in a deeply traditional Ìjèsà family, in South-West Nigeria. He was educated at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he obtained a Diploma and BA (Hons) degree in Theatre Arts before obtaining a Research MA Drama at the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa) in Comparative Yorùbá and Zulu performance cultures. He obtained his PhD at the University of Leeds, UK on the work of African dramatist Fémi Òsófisán. Solá lectures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is the Programme Director for MA World Theatres. His researches are in world theatre and performance studies, particularly the works of Nigerian playwright Fémi Òsófisán; intercultural performance culture; postcolonial literature and African Studies; and diasporic African and black British theatre in its exploration of the politics of identity. His particular areas of interest in Africa are West Africa and Southern Africa. He has recently completed a monograph on Òsófisán, Vision of Change in African Drama: Deconstructing Identity and Reconfiguring History (2019). He is currently working on a monograph, ‘Dramatizing the Postcolony: Nigerian Drama and Theatre’. He is Associate Editor of African Performance Review, Contributing Editor to 3P+ International Journal of the Arts, and Reviews Editor of African Theatre journal.

Desha Dauchan

Desha, a San Francisco native, Howard University and UCLA Alumna is an award winning filmmaker. Mentored by filmmaker Kasi Lemmons, Desha produced, wrote and directed two short films, Episodes & Whispers winning Desha The Directors’ Guild of America Student Award, taking her to Cannes as a Kodak Emerging Filmmaker. Both films were finalists in the HBO Short Film competition at the American Black Film Festival and honored with the UCLA Spotlight Award. After winning the IFP Gordon Parks Award for Directing, Whispers screened at The Sundance Film Festival. As a writer, Desha explores magical realism in her feature length screenplays that have found support at Tribeca All Access, Film Independent Screenwriter’s Lab and the Hedgebrook Screenwriter’s Lab. Desha is excited about innovative approaches to visual storytelling and the sharing of rich human stories. She lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband and two children and lectures on Film & Media Studies at University of California, Irvine.

Brenda Dixon Gottschild

Brenda Dixon Gottschild is the author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts; Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (winner of the 2001 Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication); The Black Dancing Body–A Geography from Coon to Cool (winner, 2004 de la Torre Bueno prize for scholarly excellence in dance publication); and Joan Myers Brown and The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina-A Biohistory of American Performance. 

Additional honors include the Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research (2008); a Leeway Foundation Transformation Grant (2009); the International Association for Blacks in Dance Outstanding Scholar Award (2013); the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus Civil Rights Award (2016); and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2017).

A self-described anti-racist cultural worker utilizing dance as her medium, she is a freelance writer, consultant, performer, and lecturer; a former consultant and writer for Dance Magazine; and Professor Emerita of dance studies, Temple University. As an artist-scholar she coined the phrase, “choreography for the page,” to describe her embodied, subjunctive approach to research writing. Nationwide and abroad she performs self-created solos and collaborates with her husband, choreographer/dancer Hellmut Gottschild, in a genre they developed and titled “movement theater discourse. www.bdixongottschild.com

Mojisola Adebayo

Mojisola Adebayo has BA in Drama and Theatre Arts, an MA in Physical Theatre, a PhD in black queer theatre (Goldsmiths, Royal Holloway and Queen Mary, University of London) and she trained extensively with Augusto Boal in Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. She has worked in theatre, radio and television, on four continents, over the past two decades, performing in over 50 productions, writing, devising and directing over 30 plays and leading countless workshops, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe.  Her own plays in production include Moj of the Antarctic: An African Odyssey (Lyric Hammersmith and Oval House), Muhammad Ali and Me (Oval House, Albany Theatre and National touring), 48 Minutes for Palestine (Ashtar Theatre and international touring), Desert Boy (Albany Theatre and national touring), The Listeners (Pegasus Theatre), I Stand Corrected (Artscape, Oval House and international touring and The Interrogation of Sandra Bland (Bush Theatre and US premiere at Goodman Theatre forthcoming). Her publications include Mojisola Adebayo: Plays One (Oberon Books), 48 Minutes for Palestine in Theatre in Pieces (Methuen), The Interrogation of Sandra Bland in Black Lives, Black Words (Oberon Books), The Theatre for Development Handbook (written with John Martin and Manisha Mehta, available through www.pan-arts.net) as well as numerous academic chapters published by Methuen and Palgrave Macmillan. Mojisola Adebayo: Plays Two (Oberon books) is out in 2019. She is currently commissioned by the National Theatre to write Wind / Rush Generation which will be staged in 2020, followed by her play STARS at Ovalhouse Theatre and touring in 2020. Mojisola an Associate Artist with Pan, a Visiting Artist at Rose Bruford and Goldsmiths colleges and a Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London.

Professor Henry John Drewal

Apprenticeships with Yorùbá sculptors in Abeokuta and Ilaro, Nigeria transformed Henry John Drewal’s life, leading to a PhD at Columbia University in African arts, histories, and cultures. He has been the Evjue-Bascom Professor of African and African Diaspora arts in the Departments of Art History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1991. His books and catalogues include Introspectives: Contemporary Art by Americans and Brazilians of African Descent (1989) ; Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (co-authored with John Pemberton III and Rowland Abiodun; 1989) ; Beads, Body, and Soul: Art and Light in the Yoruba Universe (co-authored with John Mason; 1998); Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and its Diasporas (2008); Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora (editor; 2008); and Dynasty and Divinity: Ife Art in Ancient Nigeria (co-authored with Enid Schildkrout; 2010). His films include Celebrating Sacred Twins in Africa; Whirling Return of the Ancestors: Egungun Festivals in Porto-Novo-Benin and Oyotunji African Village-South Carolina; African Artistry: Technique and Aesthetics of the Yoruba Master Sculptor Ebo Segbe; Efe/Gelede Ceremonies among the Western Yoruba; Yoruba Performance; and BLACKsmiths of Morocco. 

The art of Faisal Abdu’Allah and his contemporaries in the early 1980s can be evaluated in a manner that fills an important void within available scholarship on the subject of contemporary art in relation to Afro-British culture. What began as an artistic gesture in the 1980s more fully materialized in the early twenty-first century as a complete conceptual approach that questioned issues of race and identity in relation to issues of cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Abdu’Allah’s work broke away from the British artistic establishment and the rules of institutional representation, particularly insofar as he began selecting his subjects from émigré utopia, Afro-British social consciousness, British identity, and working-class life.

Faisal Abdu’Allah graduated from the Royal College of Art, he was awarded his Ph.D. in 2012, for his dissertation; ‘Mirror to my Thoughts’, under the supervision of the artist Gavin Turk (YBA) and is cited in over 50 publications. He has exhibited at Tate Modern, Studio Museum Harlem, Serpentine Gallery, 55th Venice Biennale and The Royal Academy and his works are in the collections of, Tate Britain; The Victoria & Albert Museum; CAAM; National Maritime Museum, British Arts Council and The Chazen Museum. Abdu’Allah was awarded, First Prize at Tallinn Print Triennial, Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, and the Romnes Faculty Award. Abdu’Allah recently appeared on Robert Elms discussing his last solo show Duppy Conqueror, 2018. Recently, he exhibited at Aston Hall in, Walls Have Ears: 400 Years of Change  and has been commissioned by The Mayor’s Office and Create London for his project ‘Park Royals’, 2019.

Abdu’Allah is represented by Magnolia Editions, USA , and Autograph (ABP), UK. He maintains studios in London/Madison and currently resides in the USA.

Reginold Royston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Africana Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research examines technoculture in Ghana, West Africa, and the role of its digital diaspora in the African mediascape, in areas such as viral dance-music, podcasting, and tech entrepreneurship. He teaches courses on oral culture and digital media, Africa’s Internet, and the political economy of computing. He teaches in the Department of African Cultural Studies, and at the School of Computing, Information, and Data Sciences. With Faisal Abdu’allah, he co-curates the Black Arts + Data Futures collaborative. He is currently working on a manuscript about the impact of digital media on Ghanaian national identity.

Sakina Ibrahim is an NAACP Image Award-nominated Author, Social Entrepreneur, and Dance Educator. She has been featured in publications such as Aspire TV and Black Enterprise Magazine and been a featured author at Essence Fest. Sakina is a passionate woman whose brand focus is movement, culture, and mindfulness. She has presented workshops and master classes at institutions such as Drexel University, George Washington University (Black Girl Health Expo), University of California Irvine, the Boston Women’s Conference, Michigan State University, the Trayvon Martin Foundation, and many more. Sakina holds a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine and a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of the Arts. Her performance credits include: Rennie Harris RHAW, Beauty Shop the Play featured on OWN Network, Bayside the Musical, Creed 2, Silver linings Playbook and more. Sakina served as the Rehearsal/Teaching Assistant to the late Donald McKayle and worked closely as the Assistant to Hollywood Creative Director Anthony Burrell. Sakina’s research and teaching philosophy in dances of the African Diaspora stem from her ethnographic work in Ghana at the Dagbe Cultural Arts Center. Her work explores how to use dance as a tool of empowerment and self-discovery for youth of color. She has done this work with organizations such as The Dance Theatre of Harlem, Mark Morris Dance Center, and the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Sakina continues to expand her passion of the arts, creativity, and healing nationally. Her inspiring books include Big Words to Little Me: Advice to the younger self, A Hustler’s Planner, and Daily Moves: Affirmations for the Millennials. More information can be found on Sakinaibrahim.com

Sela Adjei

Sela Adjei, a Ghanaian multidisciplinary artist and academic, trained as a Communication Designer at the College of Art in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology where he also received an MPhil in African Art and Culture. He received his PhD in African Studies at University of Ghana, Legon. As an experienced multimedia Artist, Sela’s artistic career spans a period of over 10 years. He has worked as a designer, curator and visual communication consultant for various publishing companies and international organizations (including Johns Hopkins University, World Bank, Ghana Ministry of health, Universal Merchant Bank, Sub-Saharan Publishers, African Centre for Economic Transformation(ACET). He has participated in over 20 exhibitions including 7 solo exhibitions within the last three years. Sela is a member of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association. He has curated a number of important exhibitions including the exhibition held at the 2nd Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Intellectual and Cultural Festival (Kwabena Nketia Hall, The Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon). He was also the lead curator for the 2017 CHALEWOTE STREET ART FESTIVAL, organized by Accra[dot]altradio. Sela represented Ghana at the 8th edition of the EAST AFRICAN ART BIENNIAL in Dar es Salaam, and four other East African cities.
Research forms an integral part of Sela’s creative process. His main research areas include: Design, Curatorial Pedagogies, Creative Entrepreneurship, Visual Communication, Art History, Religion, Anthropology, and Philosophy. Sela’s works have been exhibited at the W.E.B Dubois Memorial Centre in Accra, the Bologna International Book Fair, World Bank Office, Haverford College (Pennsylvania), Nafasi Art Space (Dar Es Salaam) and the Institute of African Studies, Legon.

Dr. Dele Olajide   MD. PhD. FRCPsych. FRSA.

Dr. Dele Olajide is Emeritus Consultant Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital London.

He obtained basic medical education at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and his postgraduate psychiatric training at the world famous Maudsley Hospital. He undertook his doctoral and postdoctoral research in clinical psychopharmacology at the equally world-famous Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, London. He was appointed a senior clinical lecturer in Psychiatry and a consultant psychiatrist at both institutions and also became an Associate Medical Director in medical informatics until his retirement in June 2017.

Dr. Olajide worked on secondment as a Senior Medical officer in the English Department of Health with special responsibility for black and minority ethnic mental health policy and also advised ministers in that capacity. Dr. Olajide has developed several innovative psychiatric services for the black and ethnic minority communities in London most notably the innovative and multi award winning cares of life project, which became the template for a national service, improving access for psychological treatment for anxiety and depressive disorders.

As part of his interest in the arts, Dr. Olajide has worked in collaboration with professional actors to produce a play by psychiatric inpatients based on improvisational methodology. He has also curated an art exhibition. Dr. Olajide has published widely and has edited two books on ethnic minority mental health. He is an International Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has appeared on TV and radio as expert on mental health policy and has given over 200 keynote speeches and lectures. Hobbies include fine wine collection, jazz, classical music, opera and inspirational cooking.

Dr. Charles J. Limb, M.D.

Dr. Charles Limb is the Francis A. Sooy Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and the Chief of the Division of Otology, Neurotology and Skull Base Surgery at UC San Francisco. He is also the Director of the Douglas Grant Cochlear Implant Center at UCSF and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Neurosurgery.

Dr. Limb received his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and his medical training at Yale University School of Medicine, followed by surgical residency and fellowship in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Center for Hearing Sciences at Johns Hopkins with Dr. David Ryugo studying the development of the auditory brainstem, and a second postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health studying neural mechanisms of musical improvisation and perception using functional neuroimaging methods. He was at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1996 to 2015, where he was Associate Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and a Faculty Member at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and School of Education at Johns Hopkins University. He left in 2015 to join the UCSF Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

Dr. Limb’s expertise covers the full scope of otology and neurotology, with a focus on the treatment of hearing loss and auditory disorders. He specializes in all surgery of the temporal bone, with particular expertise in acoustic neuroma surgery, cochlear implant surgery, implantable hearing aids, stapes surgery, cholesteatoma surgery, and cancers of the ear. His current areas of research focus on the study of the neural basis of musical creativity as well as the study of music perception in deaf individuals with cochlear implants. He is the past Editor-in-Chief of Trends in Amplification (now Trends in Hearing), the only journal explicitly focused on auditory amplification devices and hearing aids, and an Editorial Board member of the journals Otology and Neurotology and Music and Medicine. His work has received international attention and has been featured by National Public Radio, TED, National Geographic, the New York Times, PBS, CNN, National Endowment for the Arts, Scientific American, the British Broadcasting Company, the Smithsonian Institute, the Library of Congress, the Sundance Film Festival, Canadian Broadcasting Company, the Kennedy Center, San Diego Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the American Museum of Natural History.

Akua Agyeman MD PhD MBA FACRRM DipABP DipABIM

Akua is a veteran US physician and pediatrician with many years of experience working in private practice, and as a hospitalist, hospital administrator and executive. She is also a Fellow of the Australian Rural and Remote Medicine College.  She has worked in many countries and is passionate about rural and remote medicine and practicing and training physicians to work in under-resourced environments.  Currently living and working in Australia where she has a private practice, she has mentored and trained medical students, junior residents/registrars and physicians as chief medical officer or in her supervisory roles as Medical Superintendent in Aus, NZ and the US.  In addition to obtaining her MPH in retrieval medicine and medicine in under-resourced environments, she holds a PhD in Pharmacology and Physiology, is mid-way through a Medical and Mechanical Engineering degree, and has taught both in medical schools and allied health programs and trained and mentored several generations of PAs, NPs to help address physician shortage in rural areas.  Her career interests lie in improving medical resources in underserved areas, improving factors for chronic disease by educating and training youth to become the innovators and medical workforce of the future, using resources available to them locally.  She has quality and risk management experience, and an interest in pioneering the intersection between Health and Information Technology.  She has written several IOS apps both for managing patient care and for teaching and is interested in collaborating and partnering with US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand high schools and Universities to partner with and offer tele-classes in schools in Africa as a way of developing the local talent and securing a future for young Africans.

Aaron Trammell 

Aaron Trammell is an assistant professor of Informatics at UC Irvine. He graduated from the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information in 2015 and spent a year at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC as a postdoctoral researcher. Aaron’s research is focused on revealing historical connections between games, play, and the
United States military-industrial complex. He is interested in how political and social ideology is integrated in the practice of game design and how these perspectives are negotiated within the imaginations of players. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal _Analog Game Studies_ and the Multimedia Editor of _Sounding Out!_.

Dr. Tim Downing

Dr. Tim Downing is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Downing received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University, his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard University in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His research has beenrecognized by the Ford Foundation Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships, UNCF/Merck Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School. In addition, he was recently named to the 2017 class of 30 Under 30 in Science by Forbes Magazine for his research aimed at understanding how extracellular signals can influence cell fate. The Downing Lab is developing new approaches in epigenome engineering to advance the application of stem cell technologies.

Dr. Roderic Crooks

Dr. Roderic Crooks is an assistant professor in the Department of Informatics at UC Irvine. His research examines the use of digital technology in minoritized communities and the civic institutions that serve them. His current project explores the application of data analytics and associated computational techniques to the politically fraught realm of urban education. He has also published works on science and technology studies, political theories of online participation, and equity of access to information and media technologies.

Mustapha Diyaol-Haqq

Mustapha Diyaol-Haqq was raised in Old Tafo, in the Ashanti Region, Ghana. He is a Software Developer and a Code Instructor at Ghana Code Club. Where he teaches children and adults in Ghana the fundamentals of Computer Science. He is working on an Artificial Intelligent System to diagnose and predict breast cancer. As a Content

Developer for Ghana Code Club,

Mustapha worked to produce the Artificial Intelligence curriculum for children, the first of its kind in Africa. Mustapha is on a mission to bridge the gap between Minorities and Technology.  Due to his exceptional and inspirational story, Mustapha was appointed the Youth Ambassador for Africa Code Week 2019 (5).  As an Applied AI Researcher, Mustapha looks to solve some of the African continent’s biggest challenges using Artificial Intelligence. His research is focused on sectors that play important roles in improving the African economy such as, Agriculture and Healthcare. Mustapha is the co-founder and Applied AI Researcher of Okuafo Foundation (6), an NGO in Ghana with the mission of minimizing hunger and poverty in Africa by building tech solutions to help farmers increase yield and prevent losses. Mustapha is also the Content Developer for Ghana Code Club, where he creates curated content to teach Ghanaian children and adults computer programming. At the age of 18, he was awarded one of the Big Six Most Influential Students in Ghana in the area of Scientific Creativity by the National Students Awards Ghana. In 2019, Mustapha was awarded a Presidential Scholarship to study at BlueCrest University college. 

Kishau Rodgers

Kishau has a deep background in Computer Science, over 25 years of experience leading the development of enterprise technology solutions and more than 15 years of entrepreneurial leadership. She is the Founder & CEO of Time Study, Inc., a high-growth startup offering solutions for using machine learning, advanced natural language processing, and data science to automatically tell a story of how enterprise employees spend their time. The Time Study platform already serves some of the largest health organizations in the US and currently supports tens of thousands of enterprise employees daily. She also founded and operated software consulting firm, Websmith Inc, which for over fourteen years has partnered with leading health & research organizations across the globe in making their software ideas real. ​As an active & awarded technology leader, ​Kishau is featured in many national publications including the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Black Enterprise, and NFIB. She is a recipient of many awards including the NAWBO Wells Fargo STEM award, the Lyn McDermid Community Impact Award, and the MBL Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

In her commitment to STEM and leveraging technology for global good, she also serves as an advisor/board member for organizations like Think Of Us, WAAW Foundation, and VCU Department of Computer Science. She served as an advisor for the first U.S. White House Hackathon for Foster Care and is the co-founder of SheHacks Africa, a software engineering intensive providing training to women & girls in over three African nations. Kishau splits her time between Richmond, VA and New York with her husband Bernard and their two kids and two dogs.

Ash Baccus Clark

Ash Baccus-Clark is a Berlin-based Molecular & Cellular Biologist and multidisciplinary artist who uses new media and storytelling to explore themes of deep learning, cognition, memory, race, trauma, and systems of belief.

She currently consults in virtual reality production and is working on her first feature. Ash is currently represented by Mssng Peces, is an Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology, an RLabs XR Beta Resident, and a 2019 United States Artist fellow in Media.

In her work with Hyphen-Labs, Ash served as the Director of Brand Marketing & Research, writing and producing an award-winning immersive installation project, NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism (NSAF), a three-part digital narrative that sits at the intersection of product design, virtual reality, and neuroscience that was originally inspired by the lack of multidimensional representations of Black women in technology. NSAF incorporates object-based design, virtual reality, and cognitive impact research that reimagines the future of Black women in STEM fields.

NSAF first premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and has been shown at Sundance Film Fest, SXSW, Tribeca Film Fest (Jury Honorable Mention), Gray Area Art & Technology Festival, Primer Speculative Futures Conference, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Stony Island Arts Bank & Rebuild Foundation, New Inc: Versions Festival, Refinery 29’s 29 Rooms, and more.

Previously, Ash served as a brand manager on the retail brand management team of Warby Parker and worked as a molecular biologist at the University of California San Francisco researching cell and developmental biology with an emphasis on stem cell research