My research agenda examines secondary schools as critical sites for negotiating historical and contemporary racial, gender, and development inequalities in Sierra Leone, and Africa more broadly.

I situate my research in anthropological studies of schooling, youth, gender, race, and policy. Importantly, my work is multidisciplinary and integrates theories from comparative and international education, women and gender studies, political science, and African Studies and African Diaspora studies. My projects are primarily qualitative and use ethnographic observations, interviews, multimedia analyses, and archival research.

My first book project tentatively titled Some Say I’m Too Small: The Politics of Schooling and Inclusion for Young Women in Sierra Leone draws on four years of research, including 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and teaching in Sierra Leone. This project examines how secondary schoolgirls in postwar Sierra Leone navigated the everyday politics of their inclusion and exclusion in schools and society in the wake of several high profile national education and gender reforms from 2018 to 2023 for which the country received significant international press and global development funding.

This work argues that education and gender reforms, especially tuition-free policies targeted at providing access to schooling for pregnant teenagers and young mothers, were instrumental in restoring the Sierra Leone’s global reputation following state failures during the civil war (1991-2002) and the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Yet these progressive initiatives were less effective in transforming local gender power relations for secondary schoolgirls who continued to face gender and sexual-based violence and were excluded from social and political life.

This project contributes to broader debates regarding the important role of education reforms in countries affected by conflict and crises by discussing how formal schooling can both ameliorate and reproduce gender inequalities in postwar communities. This work also provides empirical examples from the education sector on emergent theories of racialization in development in Africa and speaks to longer genealogies of transnational research in Black Feminist Studies that interrogates the state’s concerns around the sexual and reproductive practices of Black women and girls.

My newest line of research, First-Class Women: Tracing the Global Influence of the Annie Walsh Memorial School for Girls in Freetown is a study that explores the life experiences of elite Sierra Leonean women who attended The Annie Walsh Memorial School for Girls (AWMS) established in Freetown in 1849 as the first secondary school for girls in West Africa. Despite the significance of AWMS in providing young Sierra Leonean women, and beyond, with the education and skills to succeed personally and professionally, there is no scholarship to date focused on the impact of this school on Sierra Leonean society, and on the lives of the women who attended this institution. In this research, I ask these women: How did attending AWMS shape your life trajectory?

I use archival research and oral histories from AWMS graduates in Sierra Leone and its diaspora communities in the United States and United Kingdom – many who became politicians, diplomats, entrepreneurs, and educators – to bring stronger theoretical understanding of if and how schooling transforms the lives and careers of the most privileged African women. These interviews will also be used in a short documentary about AWMS, which I will produce in collaboration with young Sierra Leonean creatives.

Please contact me if you would like to learn more about any of these projects.