Black Study, Black Struggle in & Beyond the University

A.Y. Odedeyi is a PhD student on Three Fires Confederacy Territory, the ancestral lands of the Odawa, Potawatomi, Ojibwe peoples, where the Philosophy department at Michigan State University resides. Her research broadly addresses how 20th century Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous community organisers, writers, and visual artists offer a set of theories for contemporary sovereignty and survival. A.Y. is of Yoruba descent, born in Lagos, Nigeria, and was raised in Dish with One Spoon Territory on the Canadian imposition onto Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Mississauga lands. As a settler international student, she is involved in projects and organisations concerned with anti-capitalist work, prison abolition, food sovereignty, and poor/working class employment protections. As a Black woman with ADHD and depression, she advocates for the visibility of Black neurodiversity and mental illness in academia and higher ed pedagogy. A.Y.’s hobbies include collecting gel pens and fountain pens, camping, knitting, crochet, and baking.