School of Social Sciences

Gbolahan Olasina

Gbolahan Olasina

Gbolahan Olasina

Senior Lecturer

DisciplineInformation Studies

Email OlasinaG@ukzn.ac.za

Contact Number 033-260-5285

CampusPietermaritzburg Campus

Office Address Room 336, New Arts Building

Last Updated 2 years ago

Degrees held

  • BA (Hons)
  • MLIS
  • PhD Information Studies
  • Oracle Database Certified Associate (OCA)

Research Interests

  • Digital Life – E-learning, M-learning, Digital Libraries, User Studies/User Acceptance, research methods, interaction paradigms, Technology & Culture, Information Systems and human aspects of technology adoption.

Teaching Interests

  • Web 2.0, Digital Libraries, Web design/publishing, Information Technology, Information Systems, Information Ethics, research methods.

Selected Publications

Awards and Honors

  • National Research Foundation (NRF rating) –C2
  • Postdoctoral research fellowship, University of South Africa 2014-2016 worth almost R1million.
  • Conference grant of the College of Human Sciences (CHS), University of South Africa (UNISA) to the Canadian International Conference on Advances in Education, Teaching & Technology 2016 (EduTeach2016), Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, 16-17 July 2016.
  • Conference grant of the College of Human Sciences (CHS), University of South Africa (UNISA) to the 2015 International Conference on Virtual Reality holding at the Biltmore Millennium Hotel, Los Angeles, 9-10 April 2015.
  • CODESRIA award at the Methodology Workshop on Train the Trainers for faculty in African universities by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) held in Dakar, Senegal, 25-29 November 2013. Made a shortlist of 15 young researchers in methodology in Africa.

Student Supervision

  • Malatji, Kwetepe Julious. 2017. Students’ Perceptions of the role of the library in their studies at the Tshwane University of Technology, Polokwane Campus. MIS thesis. University of South Africa (co-supervisor).

Community Engagement

Review responsibilities/Technical committee memberships of international conferences/journals

  • Member, Technical Committee, 2018 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality (AIVR2018), 23-25 November 2018, Nagoya, Japan. Please see: http://aivr.org/com.html
  • Member, Technical Committee, 2018 4th International Conference on Virtual Reality, February 24-26, 2018, Hong Kong. Please see: http://www.icvr.org/com.html/
  • Journal of Global Information Management (JGIM), USA, 2015 –
  • Behaviour and Information Technology, Taylor & Francis (ISSN 0144-929X (Print), 1362-3001 (Online), 2015 –
  • The International Journal of Information Processing and Communication (IJIPC), an international journal of the Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Ilorin 2010 –
  • Digital Solutions for Contemporary Democracy and Government, Global Publishers, USA, 2015-
  • African Journal of Information Systems (AJIS), Kennesaw State University, United States, 2015–
  • Mousaion, Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa, 2014 –

Research Projects

Digital Life project explores the affordances of new digital media use by learners and other categories of users in the developing world. The research covered 2014 to 2017 measuring the impact and the effect of digital media on the society and framing user expectations for the future. Served as lead investigator. On-going projects are listed below:

  1. New research methodologies in Information Science in Africa.
  2. User accounts after death on social networking sites: The South African experience.
  3. Digital media and changing narratives and new literacies.
  4. Resource discovery and metadata driven research in Southern Africa.
  5. A digital humanities’ future: Perspectives from developing countries.