Desmond Ikenna Odugu is the Associate Professor of Education and Chair of the Department of Education at Lake Forest College.

He received his PhD in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies, with focus in Comparative and International Education, from Loyola University Chicago.

His intellectual background is in Philosophy (including African Philosophy), Educational Psychology, history, political economics, and mass communication.

He conducts research on language processes in multilingual societies, the historiography of Western education in West African contexts, and the relationships among education, history, culture, language, and social change in less industrialized societies.

Dr. Odugu has extensive field research experiences in India, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

He has also been studying the intra-racial dynamics among Africans in Diaspora, especially African Americans and African immigrants and non-immigrants in the United States.

In summer 2013, Dr. Odugu initiated a cross-national longitudinal project on the links between historical literacies, linguistic practices (in and outside schools), and civic responsibility. Dr. Odugu is an active member of Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) where has served both the Language Issues Special Interest Group and the Africa Special Interest Group in various capacities.

He also is a member of the African Studies Association (ASA) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA).