Dr. Krystal Strong is an assistant professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division, a member of the Anthropology graduate group, and a faculty affiliate of Africana Studies, the Price Lab for the Digital Humanities, the Center for Experimental Ethnography, and the Hub for Equity, Anti-Oppression, Research and Development (HEARD).

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. She teaches courses in the Education, Culture, and Society and International Educational Development programs that focus on global youth cultures, ethnography and qualitative research methods, decolonizing education, and grassroots community activism. 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.

In 2017, Dr. Strong was awarded the Council on Anthropology and Education’s Presidential Early Career Fellowship. In 2020, she testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, on “The Youth Bulge in Africa: Considerations for U.S. Policy.” 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 democracy.

Research Interests and Current Projects

Dr. Strong is currently working on multiple research projects that 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. Each of these projects incorporates elements of digital and public scholarship with the support of community partners, the digital scholarship team at Penn Libraries, and the Price Lab for the Digital Humanities.

Activism Beyond the Classroom(2016–)
A course and digital platform co-designed with Penn students and Philadelphia community activists, which engages in participatory inquiry and public scholarship related to grassroots activism around education and social justice. The course features public writings and curricula, a mixtape, and a class podcast.

African Youth Leadership Study (2016–)
A multinational qualitative study and mapping project, which investigates the global proliferation of educational initiatives that have targeted African youth for leadership development over the past decade. This study examines the growing relationship between educational development and the formation of a new leadership class in Africa.

School Protests in Africa (2017–)
A mixed methods study to track the incidence and causes of school-based protest in Africa since 2000, with support from the Spencer Foundation to make the database and map publicly accessible online.

Re/Member Black Philadelphia (2017–)
A multimodal digital storytelling and community archiving project, which investigates processes of displacement and community resistance in the city of Philadelphia, utilizing ethnography, oral history, mapping, filmmaking, archiving, and 3D technologies.

Publications

Selected Publications

Strong, K. (In press). Love for my people: Some reflections on Sheila Walker and life-affirming anthropology. Transforming Anthropology.

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.

Royston, R. & Strong, K. (2019). Re-territorializing Twitter: African moments 2010–2015. In A. De Kosnick, & K. P. Feldman (Eds.), #Identity: Hashtagging, race, gender, sex, and nation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan 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.

Strong, K., & Ossei-Owusu, S. (2014). Naija boy remix: Afroexploitation and the new media creative economies of cosmopolitan African youth. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 26(2), 189–205. doi: 10.1080/13696815.2013.861343.

Courses

Activism Beyond the Classroom
Decolonizing Education
Ethnographic Research Methods
Qualitative Modes of Inquiry
Vanguard or Vandals? The Politics of Youth in Africa
Youth Cultural Formations

News & Media

Penn GSE News

Krystal Strong urges US House subcommittee to support leadership initiatives for African youth

Strong said African students are “learning what it means to be a citizen, developing political identities, and learning the extent to which their governments and societies will support them.”

February 17, 2020

Awards & Honors

Krystal Strong has received a $50,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation to support the next 14 months of the project "Education and Political Change: Mapping Contemporary School Protests in Africa." Dr. Strong's research team will complete the first comprehensive, cross-national database of the incidence and causes of school-based protests in Africa since 2000, and will use interactive mapping technology to make this data publicly accessible to global researchers and practitioners.

Posted on September 21, 2018