Technology | The Harriet Tubman Institute

Michael Kalu

rebsl — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 17:29:34 +0000

Dr. Michael Kalu is an assistant professor of Rehabilitation Therapy in the School of Kinesiology and Health. His research spans a multifaceted, multidisciplinary approach to mobility assessment, addressing prevention, improvement, and maintenance of mobility in older adults across Africa and Canada. He also explores the use of artificial intelligence and related technologies to enhance the quality of life for Black older adults, employing Afrocentric methodologies to advance social and health equity in Canada and Africa. Read more about his projects and how to get involved at /research/project/m4aginglab/.

Keywords: Mobility, Afrocentric, Health equity, Social equity, Technology and AI

Patrick Chukwudike Okpalaeke

rebsl — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 18:50:52 +0000

Patrick Chukwudike Okpalaeke is a PhD student in the Department of History. He holds a BA in History and International Studies and an MA in Social and Political History both from the University of Uyo, Nigeria. He is interested in African history, environmental history, history of health and medicine, and mining history during the twentieth century.

Yousif Hassan

rebsl — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 16:23:00 +0000

Dr. Hassan is a Faculty Affiliate with the Center for African Studies and Illinois Distinguished Fellow and Research Associate in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. His research examines the relationship between race, digital technology, and technoscientific capitalism. Dr. Hassan’s work is at the intersection of social and racial justice, and technology policy focusing on the social, economic, and political implications of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and data. Dr. Hassan was a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. His most recent project investigates the sociotechnical knowledge production practices of the state, scientists, and the tech industry focusing on the development of AI and its innovation ecosystem across multiple African countries.

Keywords: Science and Technology Studies, Black and African Studies, Political Economy of Technoscience, Information Science, Communication Studies, Critical Algorithm Studies, Critical Innovation Studies, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Digital Platforms

Alvine Boaye Belle

rebsl — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 18:41:27 +0000

Alvine Boaye Belle is Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lassonde School of Engineering. Her research interests include: system assurance, assessment of confidence in assurance arguments, assessment of uncertainty in assurance arguments, knowledge representation, cultural awareness, requirement debt, architectural technical debt (ATD), artificial intelligence, and machine learning. She speaks both French and English. Dr. Boaye Belle is very passionate about poetry.

Damilola Adebayo

rebsl — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 15:15:03 +0000

Dr Damilola Adebayo is an Assistant Professor at the Department of History. He is a historian of Anglophone West Africa, particularly Nigeria. His research and teaching interests are at the intersection of three fields namely social and economic history; science, technology and society (STS); and the role of international organizations in the African past.

His current research theme investigates the socioeconomic life of Western technologies in Africa since the 1850s. He is keen to understand the varied contexts within which Western energy, communication, and transportation technologies were adopted, appropriated, hybridized, reinvented, or discarded by the upper class and everyday people; and the ways in which these technologies have been a cause and effect of change in African societies. A product of this theme is his ongoing book project, provisionally entitled “Electric Urbanism: Technology and Socioeconomic Life in Nigeria.”

Dr Adebayo holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Cambridge-Africa Scholar (2016–20). His work has been supported by many grants and fellowships.