Olabanke Oyinkansola Goriola is a Nigerian multidisciplinary artist-scholar, an Edward A. Bouchet scholar, an Africanist graduate student at Northwestern’s Program of African Studies (PAS), and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Performance Studies. She is the author of An African Feminist Reading of Wole Soyinka (2024), published in The Republic Journal, and the co-author of Burna Boy, #EndSARS, and the Use of Restlessness (2024), published in The Black Scholar (TBS) Journal of Black Studies and Research.
Olabanke’s writing and research explore the intricate intersections of Colorism, Dance, Performance, Media Representation, Black women’s labor, identity politics, and skin-bleaching practices. She explores the sacrifices dark-skinned Nigerian female performers make to attain cultural belonging and interrogates the media’s role in perpetuating Euro-American beauty standards. Her work critically analyzes how societal pressures shape self-representation and embodiment and how identities and bodies become sites of negotiation and resistance. Her interdisciplinary approach blends academic inquiry with creative expression, utilizing storytelling, performance, and visual media to interrogate themes of race, identity, and aesthetics.
Olabanke has an M.A. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, an MScR in Religious Studies from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), a European Union Joint M.A. in Dance Knowledge, Practice and Heritage (Choreomundus) from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Norway); University Clermont Auvergne (UCA, France); University of Szeged (Hungary), the University of Roehampton (U.R., United Kingdom), and a B.A in Theatre Arts from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Olabanke has presented her academic work at international conferences, including Performance Studies International (PSi) in London, the Canadian Association of African Studies (CAAS) in Montreal, and the International Council for Traditional Music and Dance (ICTMD) in Ghana. She is the 2025 recipient of the Department of Performance Studies’ Lilla A. Heston Award for Academic Excellence.
Learn more about Olabanke’s work here: https://olabankegoriola.com/
