Kemi Busari
kbusari@umd.eduKemi Busari is an academic researcher, award-winning journalist and committed teacher with a proven record of impact in both journalism practice and scholarship. His research interests span the full spectrum of journalism practice and experience, including newsroom culture and practices, journalism professionalization and education, investigative reporting, fact-checking, ethics, and the influence of digital technology and artificial intelligence on these areas.
Before joining the Philip Merrill College of Journalism's doctoral program, Busari served as editor of Dubawa, one of Africa’s leading fact-checking and media literacy platforms; as senior reporter with the investigative journalism outlet Premium Times; and as course director with the United Nations African Institute for Development and Planning.
His journalism has earned him more than two dozen nominations and awards, including the International Fact-Checking Network’s Highest Impact Fact-check Award, the Kavli Science Journalism Award by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Center for Journalists’ Michael Elliot Award for Excellence in African Storytelling.
In academia, Busari has secured competitive grants, fellowships and awards while actively teaching and mentoring the next generation of journalists. These include the Top Student Paper Prize (Scholastic Journalism Division, AEJMC 2025), the University of Maryland’s Summer Research Fellowship (2025) and his selection as an inaugural fellow of the First Look Institute’s Press Freedom Initiative at Merrill College (2023-).
Areas of interest
- Media sociology
- Journalism practice
- Journalism, democracy and technology/AI
- Journalism education and professionalization
- Disinformation and fact-checking
- Media ethics
Education
- B.S. (Political Science), Obafemi Awolowo University (Nigeria)
- M.S. (Communication Studies), Vrije Universiteit Brussels