Rate My Professor Kafi Kumasi

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.