Pitt-Bradford professor earns Fulbright Award for study in West Africa

’BioDun Ogundayo, associate professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to study, teach and research in Burkina Faso, a country in West Africa.

Ogundayo, who is the director of Africana Studies and foreign languages at Pitt-Bradford, will spend the 2022-23 academic year teaching in the Department of Anglophone Studies at the Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo in Ouagadougou, the capital of the West African nation.

“I will be bringing a relevant and specifically American cultural, academic and cross-cultural input and perspective to their curriculum,” Ogundayo said. He also hopes to connect his Pitt-Bradford students with his new students in Burkina Faso via Zoom.

When not teaching, Ogundayo plans to conduct research on how the oral traditions of the country’s dominant ethnic group, the Mossi, shape Burkinabe attitudes, conversations and responses to the challenges of Islamist fundamentalism and violence facing the country.

At the University of Pittsburgh, he is involved with the University Center for International Studies and the Center for African Studies, and designed and managed Pitt-Bradford’s undergraduate certificate in African Studies. He has taught at Pitt-Bradford since 2001 and plans to use what he learns in Burkina Faso to contribute to the University’s curriculum, diversity initiatives and Center for African Studies. 

The Fulbright Program, which selects 400 nationwide scholars annually, is the flagship international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government.