PhD Candidate in Applied Linguistics and African Studies 

(Fall 2025)

My dissertation explores how African philosophical concepts and indigenous knowledge systems can inform more contextually grounded approaches to multilingual education and language planning in an African context. It challenges dominant Western paradigms of language planning that continue to shape educational policy and practice, particularly in postcolonial settings like Ghana. By foregrounding local, community-based understandings of language and learning, the study offers a decolonial reimagining of language planning that recognizes linguistic diversity as socially embedded and pedagogically generative, particularly within educational spaces.

In Ghanaian classrooms, students bring extensive multilingual competencies shaped by their lived experiences to their classes. Yet national policies continue to prioritize English-only instruction, reinforcing colonial legacies that devalue indigenous languages and ways of knowing. This disjuncture impedes students’ academic success and undermines cultural identity and linguistic justice. By analyzing how race, class, coloniality, and indigenous knowledge systems shape language practices, this study illustrates how current language policies perpetuate systemic exclusion.

Through a comparative case study approach, this dissertation argues for educational language policies that recognize and build upon the linguistic repertoires students bring to the classroom. The project draws on African philosophical understandings of personhood, community, and ethics to advance a broader and more inclusive framework for language planning and multilingual education informed by Afro-communitarianism. It also emphasizes the importance of centering local knowledge systems and placing them as the foundation for educational transformation in the global South.