Krystal Strong
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
About Me
Dr. Krystal Strong is an assistant professor at University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and a faculty affiliate of Anthropology and Africana Studies. Dr. Strong’s research and teaching focus on student and community activism, the cultural and political power of youth, new media and popular culture, and the role of education as a site of political struggle with a geographic focus on Africa and the African Diaspora. As a scholar and active organizer in the city of Philadelphia, her hometown, Dr. Strong brings a commitment to local communities and the lessons of activism to bear on her scholarship and pedagogy.
Dr. Strong’s current research projects utilize ethnographic, participatory, and multimodal methods to investigate the role of education in emergent struggles for political transformation in Africa, and to collaboratively document community-led cultural and political organizing work around educational justice and the displacement of Black communities in Philadelphia. Her work has been published in Transforming Anthropology, Urban Education, and the Journal of African Cultural Studies. Her forthcoming book project, Apprentices to Power: Students and the Professionalization of Politics in Nigeria After Democracy is an ethnography of post-military university student politics and the trappings of leadership after Nigeria’s transition to civilian rule.
student activism, youth leadership, protest and community organizing, social media and popular culture, ethnography and multimodal methods
Contact Information: Faculty Web Page
Selected Publications & Projects
Nafziger, R. N., & Strong, K. (2020). Revolutionary vanguard no more? The student movement and the struggle for education and social justice in Nigeria. In A. Choudry & S. Vally (Eds.), The university and social justice: Struggles across the globe. London: Pluto Press.
Strong, K. (2018). Do African lives matter to Black Lives Matter? On youth uprisings and the borders of solidarity. Urban Education, 53(2), 265–285.
Strong, K. (2016). Practice for the future: The aspirational politics of Nigerian students. In A. Stambach, & K. Hall (Eds.), Student futures, aspirations, and political participation: Comparative anthropological perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Digital Projects