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Krystal strong

Krystal Strong is the Principal Investigator on the project and an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. You can find a full profile of her research on her Penn GSE scholar page.

Christiana Kallon

Christiana is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Her doctoral research interests include education, development, gender and peace and conflict studies in Sub-Saharan Africa.  She provides research assistance for Dr. Krystal Strong, and has been working on this research since 2016. She conducts interviews and has contributed to all aspects of the project. She presents this work alongside Dr. Strong at conferences. Christiana is from Sierra Leone, and has lived and worked in Kenya, Uganda and Senegal.

REHANA ODENDAAL

Rehana is a joint Ph.D. student between the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education & Sociology Department. Her doctoral research interests include youth political and civic education, online learning, histories of education and Decolonial and Post-Colonial theory. She is a South African Fulbright Scholar from Cape Town, and received her BSocSci and MA degrees from UCT. Rehana has been part of the AYLS research team since Fall 2019.

Ajibola Adigun

Ajibola graduated with his master's in social sciences from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban where he researched the 2015-2016 Fees movement as a Mandela-Rhodes Scholar. As an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, he met Dr. Krystal Strong and served as a research assistant on her doctoral thesis on student leadership in Nigeria, and wrote his undergraduate thesis on student associations and university governance at the University of Ibadan where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Political Science. He has interned at non-profits in America, and the legislative house of his home state in Oyo, Nigeria. His other research interests are in critical genealogies of decolonization, governance, and urban culture in Africa.

Fortunate Ekwuruke

Fortunate is a dual-degree student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and School of Social Policy and Practice. She began working with the research team in the Fall of 2018. Her research interests include youth development, nonprofit organizations, housing policy and education, child/youth homelessness, and socioeconomic/structural inequality. She also has a background in Africana Studies, specifically relating to the Igbo Nigerian immigrant experience. 

Arnaud Mutabazi

Arnaud is an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. As an African international student from Rwanda, he is interested in education on the African continent. He is excited to work with Dr. Strong's Youth Leadership Team helping collecting data, analyzing it, and learning from other young African leaders in the process. Arnaud is passionate about bringing change on the African continent as he pursues his undergraduate studies.

Folatomi Alli-Balogun

Folatomi is a mechanical engineering student at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a research assistant in the Strong Research Group. In the early stages of this project, Folatomi worked alongside Christiana and Patty to build out the database of leadership initiatives. Folatomi currently works with Dr. Strong on the Student Protests in Africa Project and as a teaching assistant for mechanical engineering labs. She is passionate about education and development in Africa, and likes to travel in her free time.

PATTY LAN

Patty is a recent graduate of University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She has been working on this research since 2017, for which she has conducted interviews, systems and database design, identified and analyzed initiatives, and developed the codebook. She is interested in international development, higher education, emerging/emerged economies and postcolonialism. She will begin research in a doctoral program in anthropology starting in the fall of 2019. 

HAOYANG ZhAng

Haoyang Zhang received a Master of Science in International Educational Development from University of Pennsylvania in 2017, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociology at The Pennsylvania State University. In 2017, she helped review relevant scholarship and international policies related to the AYLS study after previously serving as a research assistant at IBE-UNESCO, where one of her major contributions was analyzing youth policies. She is interested in examining the role of education in social stratification and has strong analytical skills in both qualitative and quantitative research. Haoyang is passionate about formulating educational policies and conducting sociological research with a focus on equity in a global context.

KAKO YAMADA

Kako Yamada received a Master's of Science in the International Educational Development Program (IEDP) at the University of Pennsylvania. Her interest in African leadership programs and the experience of their participants stems from teaching and working with youth in Uganda and in the Comoros Islands. Alongside Dr. Strong, Rehana, and Shaquilla, she facilitates, transcribes, and codes interviews and looks forward to continuing with the team in the paper writing process.