Diedre L. Badejo, Ph.D. is professor of Comparative Literature & Historiography, African and African Diaspora Studies, a recognized humanities scholar, speaker, and widely published academic and creative writer. She’s a Rockefeller Fellow (Brown University, 1987-88), Fulbright Alumna (Ghana, 1990-91), and American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow (Kent State University, 2006-07). Her ACE project for Kent State University focused on “Internationalizing the Campus.” She continues to contribute to the ACE Leadership Academy for Department Chairs with her presentation on “Academic Quality and Institutional Mission.” She has consulted for the African Leadership Institute on its Leadership Development workshops, the Ghana Ministry of Youth, Sports, and Culture during her tenure as a Fulbright Scholar, and she currently is working on a higher education project in southern Africa.
Dr. Badejo has held academic and administrative positions nationally and globally. She began her career in higher education as an adjunct in the California State University system, and rose through the ranks from assistant to full professor, teaching across the country from California to New England, Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland. Diedre served as senior editor and head of the editorial department at Ahmadu Bello University Press in Nigeria. There she worked directly with Nigerian scholars and organizations on a spectrum of topics from livestock migration across the Sahel and historical texts addressing pre-colonial and colonial topics. She taught graduate courses in Nigerian and Ghanaian Theatre and led a seminar series on Civil Rights History at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, and trained student participants through the Model African Union at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
As a research scholar, Dr. Badejo worked with an international team of African and other women scholars in Bellagio, Italy as executive committee member and contributing editor to “Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel (2005), a Ford Foundation sponsored five-part series of the Feminist Press at City University of New York. She authored “The African Union (2008), a book commissioned by Chelsea House for its Global Organizations Series. She is widely published in encyclopedias, journals and edited books in the US and abroad on topics related to African and the African Diaspora. In 2009, she toured Vietnam’s educational institutions to explore potential partnerships with its Ministry of Education and Training, and in June 2016 she led UB students and faculty on an educational tour to Cuba. She participated in the Council for International Education Exchange (CIEE): Brazil Seminar in 2012. She has delivered keynote addresses in England, Nigeria, and the Bahamas, and research seminar papers in South Korea, England, Trinidad, Senegal and around the United States. Diedre served as an outside dissertation reviewer in England, and an external reviewer for faculty promotion at the University of Science and Technology in Ghana, and hosted a Fulbright graduate student from Poland. She was Kent State University’s Fulbright Program Officer; a position she currently holds at the University of Baltimore where she also serves as program director for its Interdisciplinary Studies major.
Dr. Badejo served as Research Director for the Kentucky Derby Museum’s project on African Americans in Thoroughbred Racing which won recognition from the Kentucky Humanities Council in 1993. Her research contributed to two short documentaries, “African Americans in Thoroughbred Racing,” and “Run for the Roses.” She worked in the private sector as a docudrama researcher and editor for CBS-TV and Rainbow Television Workshop in Los Angeles. She recently served as content expert and one of the featured commentators for the Osun Osogbo, Nigeria segment of the six-part PBS documentary series titled, Sacred Journeys, which aired in December 2014.
Contact: Dr. Diedre L. Badejo
diedrebadejo@gmail.com 443-991-4217; 330-389-0625.