Practice
Research
& Teaching
I work through design, media, and research at the intersection of design, technology, and social change, from an African and Global South perspective.
As a practitioner moving deeper into research, I bring creative practice together with systems thinking, and my projects have examined how media and design shape identity, culture, and power.
I work through design, media, and research at the intersection of design, technology, and social change, from an African and Global South perspective. As a practitioner moving deeper into research, I bring creative practice together with systems thinking, and my projects have examined how media and design shape identity, culture, and power.
Development
is also
a design problem.
Development
is also
a design
problem.
Not the whole of it, development is political, economic, historical, contested. But how identity, systems, and institutions are designed shapes what actually develops, and that dimension goes ignored.
Teaching
I serve as an adjunct lecturer in design and branding at Mountain Top University (2022 to present), teaching branding and graphic design across three levels, and have taught more than 400 students. My teaching connects communication design and brand thinking to how identity and systems are actually built.
400+
Students taught
Mountain Top University
Research and creative work
I hold a Master of Arts (Distinction) in Media Practice for Development and Social Change from the University of Sussex, completed as a Chevening Scholar, and a Bachelor of Science (Education) in Physics from Lagos State University. I came to design through science, teaching, and media, and that range shapes how I research.
Selected projects
01
Documentary podcast
Beyond Design
Master's dissertation. A documentary podcast on how women in design navigate a male-dominated field, drawing on two Nigerian women in architecture and digital design.
Available on request
02
Documentary
Journey Home
A documentary on how migration shapes notions of masculinity and home, told from a West African perspective.
03
Interactive platform
AlphaXX (Storytelling for Change)
An interactive platform exploring how digital media might tell stories of African leadership, innovation, and change.
04
Essay · 2020
Left Behind: Digital Salvation, the Un(der)connected, and the Mediation of the Distanced Other
On the global digital-inclusion agenda and its Western-European framing of modernity, read through postcolonial theory. University of Sussex.
05
Essay · 2020
Hashtag Activism:
The Mediation of the #BringBackOurGirls Movement
On digital activism and social movements. University of Sussex.
06
Conference paper · 2017
Effects of Outdoor Experiences with Cultural Flavor on Students Achievement in Physics
Owolabi, Okebukola, Akintoye, Akindoju, Ologundudu and Onafowokan. NARST Annual International Conference, San Antonio. From the physics-education root.
Themes
Across these projects, recurring questions:
Design's social role
How systems and institutions shape outcomes
Media for development and social change
Identity, culture, and power
Design read from a Global South perspective
Practice as research
A decade of design practice is itself a body of research, into how identity and systems are built.
I am extending that inquiry into deeper, formal research, and developing Beyond Design, a forthcoming platform for design research and cultural critique.
