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Profile picture of Oluwakemi "Kemi" Balogun

Oluwakemi "Kemi" Balogun

Associate Professor
Director of African Studies
African Studies, Black Studies, IRES, School of Global Studies and Languages, Sociology, Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages
kbalogun@uoregon.edu
Office: 311 Hendricks Hall
Office Hours: Fall 2025: Wednesdays 1 - 3pm www.calendly.com/kbalogun
Research Interests: Globalization, Nationalism, Culture, Race/Ethnicity, Immigration, Embodiment, Africana Studies
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Biography

Professor Balogun received her B.A. in Sociology from Pomona College and a Ph.D. in Sociology with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California Berkeley.. Her research focuses on gender, globalization, nationalism, race/ethnicity, and migration. She has published articles in outlets such as African Studies Review, Ethnicities, and Gender & Society.  She joined the faculty at the University of Oregon in 2013

Research Interests

  • Globalization
  • Nationalism
  • Culture
  • Race/Ethnicity
  • Immigration
  • Embodiment
  • Africana Studies

Publications

Book

  • Beauty Diplomacy: Embodying an Emerging Nation, Stanford University Press, 2020.

Edited Volume

  • Africa Every Day: Fun, Leisure, and Expressive Culture on the Continent, Ohio University Press, 2019. (co-edited with Lisa Gilman, Melissa Graboyes, and Habib Iddrisu).

Journal Articles

  • (2019) "Beauty and the Bikini: Embodied Respectablity in Nigerian Beauty Pageants" African Studies Review 62(2): 80-102.
  • (2018) "The Political Economy of Embodiment: Globally Staged Bodies in Nigerian Beauty Pageants and Vietnamese Sex Work" Sociological Perspectives 61(6): 953-972. (equal co-author with Kimberly Hoang)
  • (2012) “Cultural and Cosmopolitan: Idealized Femininity and Embodied Nationalism in Nigerian Beauty Pageants.” Gender & Society 26(3): 357-381.
  • (2011) “No Necessary Tradeoff: Context, Life Course and Social Networks in Second-Generation Nigerian Immigrant Identity Formation in the USA.” Ethnicities 11(4): 436-466.

Book Chapters

  • (2017) “Gendering Sexuality” (equal co-authorship with Kimberly Hoang) in The Social Life of Gender: From Analysis to Critique, edited by Jennifer Carlson, Abigail Andrews and Raka Ray, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
  • (2013) “Refashioning Global Bodies: Embodiment in Nigerian Beauty Pageants and the Vietnamese Sex Industry,” (equal co-author with Kimberly Hoang) in Global Beauty, Local Bodies edited by Erynn Masi de Casanova and Afshan Jafar, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.