My initial experience with computers began when my Dad bought our first family desktop, which we used to play Zuma games. When the adults complained that my siblings and I were getting addicted to games, we either switched to Marvis Bacon, as it was popular for teaching kids how to type quickly, or we found solace in Microsoft Encarta Kids, which exposed us to knowledge beyond Nigeria in multimodal forms. As a teenager, one of the first social media platforms I interacted with was 2go, an app owned by Africans, which helped me frame questions on African digital agency and technology early on. These experiences served as a precursor to my interests in how emerging technologies and multimodal forms influence composition as a PhD student at the University of Maryland.
As an Arts for All fellow, my digital project examines the visual rhetorical power of 3D representations of cultural artifacts in Nigeria, in partnership with the National Museum in Lagos.
This project has required me to gain photography and photogrammetry skills while using software applications such as Adobe Lightroom, and RealityCapture. Through this project, I also aim to create a VR and AR experience to tell digital stories for Black diasporic audiences to reconnect with their African roots.
This is a video of a Ife Art that I created using photogrammetry, which is a practice that uses measurements to convert pictures into 3D dimensional representations. Ife Art represents one of the most popular canons of Nigerian civilization before colonialism.
Through various digital humanities workshops and a mini-grant from the African American Digital and Experimental Humanities (AADHum), I have been able to build visually responsive websites using HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Twine to evaluate how digital forms reinforce intellectual arguments. I also taught the Introduction to Digital Studies class at the University of Maryland, which required me to teach students how to critically analyze digital tools and make their own projects in the process.
I specialize in the Language, Writing, and Rhetoric track at UMD. My research explores the intersection of culture, technology, and public memory, with a commitment to amplifying African voices and perspectives within digital conversations. I am also a research assistant for the Maryland Study of Writing on GenAI, Language Diversity, and Student Writing.
I am also a Center for Writing and Oral Communication Fellow with the University of Maryland’s graduate school. Prior to graduate school, I worked as a professional writer for software companies across the blockchain, AI, B2B, and eCommerce industries. My commitment to projecting African and transnational sensibilities within digital spaces serves as the basis of my academic inquiry, an experience I am eager to explore as a returning DRC fellow.
