Wilson Kwamogi Okello, Ph.D., is a transdisciplinary artist and scholar whose work draws on Black critical theories to examine knowledge production, human development, and the conditions that structure what it means to be human. His scholarship attends to how Black critical approaches render visible the epistemic foundations of humanity, while also imagining other possibilities for Black being. In this way, his work explores how theories of Blackness reconfigure understandings of well-being, inquiry, curriculum, and pedagogy, creating new conditions of possibility in education and society. Across these concerns, he advances methodological orientations attuned to liveliness, relationality, and care, offering alternatives to extractive and dehumanizing research practices in education.

Widely published, Dr. Okello is the author of the award-winning On Blackness, Liveliness, and What It Means to Be Human: Toward Black Specificity in Higher Education (SUNY Press), which received the 2025 Outstanding Book Award from Division B of the American Educational Research Association. Currently, Dr. Okello is an associate professor of Education and African Studies at Penn State University, where he directs the Black Study in Education Lab, a research and praxis hub exploring the potentialities of Blackness in educational research, practice, and policy. His early-career honors include the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Early Career Award, the Council on Ethnic Participation Mildred García Award for Exemplary Scholarship, and recognition as an Emerging Scholar by the American College Personnel Association.