Rate My Professor Kafi Kumasi

Kafi D. Kumasi, Ph.D. (she/her), is a Professor in the School of Information Sciences at Wayne State University. She earned a B.S. in Education from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1998, an M.L.I.S. from Wayne State University in 2003, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2008. Kumasi holds a Michigan Teacher’s Certificate with endorsements in secondary English, history, and library media. Her academic interests encompass school library media, urban libraries and education, multicultural education, issues and trends in children's and young adult literature, and social and cultural approaches to adolescent literacy development. As a leader in research on critical race theory and equity in education, she examines race, power, and privilege to promote culturally sustained learning for library and information science professionals serving diverse learners.

Promoted to full professor in 2023, Kumasi served as principal investigator for the Institute of Museum and Library Services Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant of $247,152 for Project RUSL (Restoring Urban School Libraries), aimed at equity literacy and restoring services in under-resourced urban public schools. She created and advises the Future Librarians for Inclusivity and Diversity student organization, developed the elective course Culture Matters: Decolonizing Information, and has addressed implicit biases in university leadership processes. Her honors include the Michigan Association for Media in Education President’s Award (2021), National Center for Institutional Diversity Exemplary Diversity Scholar Citation (2013), Association for Library and Information Science Education Best Conference Paper Award (2011), and iSchool Research Fellow at the University of Illinois (2016-2018). Key publications feature “The Global Drumbeat: Permeations of Hip Hop Across Diverse Information Worlds” (2022, International Journal for Information, Diversity & Inclusion), “Getting InFLOmation: A Critical Race Theory Tale from the School Library” (2021, MIT Press), “INFLO-mation: A Model for Exploring Information Behavior through Hip Hop” (2018, Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults), “Finding ‘Diversity Levers’ in the Core Library and Information Science Curriculum: A Social Justice Imperative” (2015, Library Trends), and “Theory Talk in the Library Science Scholarly Literature: An Exploratory Analysis” (2013, Library & Information Science Research). Kumasi has delivered national and international presentations on diversity, equity, and inclusion across library, education, and interdisciplinary fields.