Ololade Faniyi
African Feminist Writer-Practitioner, Editor & PhD Candidate
Full Bio
Ololade Faniyi is an African feminist writer-practitioner, editor and Ph.D. candidate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. She brings together African feminism and critical technology studies to frame her study of alchemy-wise African women who reimagine artificial intelligence, data work, platforms, policy and technological modernity in service of the postcolony and its decentered communities. Her work also explores Nigerian feminist digital cultures within political movements like #EndSARS and amidst encounters with the state, defensive publics, and algorithmic platforms.
Ololade is a 2026 recipient of the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, for her collaborative ethnographic study with/on women former data workers, community tech builders, and tech policy activists and lawyers across Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, and South Africa.
Ololade earned her BA in English and MA in African Studies from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and MA in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University (BGSU), where she received the Graduate College’s Best Thesis Award for her work on the digital cultures, hashtags and networks of feminist and queer justice in #EndSARS.
She is a graduate fellow for the Atlanta Interdisciplinary Artificial Intelligence (AIAI) Network. Since 2024, she joined the Nigerian digital publishing platform, The Republic, as their Gender and Feminisms commissioning and thematic editor.
Ololade has previously served as an Imagining America Publicly Active Graduate Education (PAGE) Co-Director, in addition to being a former PAGE fellow. From 2020 to 2024, she also served as an African regional advisor for FRIDA, the young feminist fund.
She has contributed as consultant, co-advisor and community of practice member to civil society organizations and knowledge collectives including TechHer Nigeria and Liberation Alliance Africa’s Sawaba Institute for Critical Consciousness Raising.
Her sole and collaborative works have been published in Feminist Media Studies, Women’s Studies in Communication, Communication, Culture and Critique, Feminist Africa, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Journal of Digital Social Research.