DEPARTMENT OF BLACK STUDIES

Research Interests:

Social and Political Theory; Africana Philosophy; Existential Phenomenology; Black Political Thought; Critical Theory; Postcolonial Studies; Psychoanalysis; Social Epidemiology; Biomedical Ethics; Cinematography

Biography:

Stephen Sola Ogunsakin is a PhD student in the Department of Black Studies and a Mellon Cluster Fellow in the Critical Theory program at Northwestern University. His research explores how Black subjectivity is shaped through the afterlives of colonial power, racial capitalism, and evolving forms of postcolonial and neoliberal governmentality. He examines the psychic and structural logics through which internalized anti-Blackness and racialized violence are (re)produced, interrogating how these dynamics constrain Black political agency and theorizing possibilities for transformative agency attuned to such conditions. Stephen holds a B.A. in Philosophy with First Class Honors from Ekiti State University in Nigeria and an M.A. in Political Philosophy (with distinction) from the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. His dissertation at Fort Hare examined the ethical dimensions of intersubjectivity in Frantz Fanon’s political and psychiatric work, with a focus on self-subjectification and the problem of complicit Black agency in the African postcolony. He also holds an M.A. in Political Science, with a concentration in Political Theory, from the University of Memphis.