Iyabo Osiapem

Research and Teaching Focus

Iyabo F. Osiapem

Teaching Professor in Africana Studies & Linguistics

co-Director WMSURE

 Ph.D. in Linguistics, University of Georgia, 2006

MS in Technical & Professional Communication, Southern Polytechnic State University, 1997

BA in International Studies, Southern Methodist University, 1994

Professor Osiapem is interested in language variation and identity constructions throughout the African Diaspora, but more specifically in the greater Caribbean region. She is working on a project tentatively titled “The Linguistic Atlas of the Greater Caribbean” with Jason Siegel (University of the West Indies—Cave Hill) and Allison Burkette (University of Kentucky), which involves gathering linguistic data from representatives in every Caribbean nation. This is a longitudinal study and it will, hopefully, continue for generations. Before working at William & Mary, Professor Osiapem was a Post Doctoral Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis after finished her PhD work at UGA. She regularly leads Study Away programs in the Caribbean for students in her Caribbean Linguistics and Caribbean Languages and Cultures courses. She has taken students to Barbados and the Virgin Islands and hopefully will expand to other arounds in the Caribbean.

Some of Professor Osiapem’s accomplishments include being the inaugural Richard Bland Faculty Fellow, serving as a CLA Fellow from 2016-2018, and being the director of the Africana House. As a joint appointment with Africana Studies and Linguistics, she enjoys being able to combine her passions of both fields and is able to bring issues around race and representation into linguistics and linguistics into Africana Studies courses.

Professor Osiapem has been working at William & Mary since 2007.