Emillion Adekoya is a Ph.D. candidate in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at Stony Brook University. She exemplifies the values honored by the Vivien Hartog Graduate Student Teaching Award, which commemorates Vivien Hartog—a WGSS graduate certificate student who passed away before completing her Ph.D. in Sociology. This award recognizes a graduate student who demonstrates a deep and ongoing commitment to social justice, activism, teaching, and learning.

Emillion has taught several courses within the department and brings a strong interdisciplinary approach to her work. Her dissertation focuses on the experiences of African LGBTQ+ asylum seekers in the United States, exploring themes of displacement, identity, and resistance. Her broader research interests include Black feminism, queer politics, gender and sexuality studies, critical race theory, African studies, refugee and asylum aesthetics, and the migration and mobility of African LGBTQ+ communities.

Emillion states:

“I am a feminist social scientist and educator who is deeply committed to social justice. I view teaching as both an intellectual and activist pursuit, and my interdisciplinary work and pedagogy are grounded in addressing the intersection and hierarchization of race, class, sexuality, gender, and nationality within global systems of capital, power, and migration, and this fuels my teaching goal of ensuring that students are empowered to understand and challenge global inequalities and systems of oppression both within and beyond the classroom. I strongly believe that teaching should be about the intentional creation of a nurturing and intellectually stimulating environment, where students know that they are seen, heard, and challenged to utilize their critical thinking and analytic skills beyond the classroom. “