Yvonne Mbanefo is a multidisciplinary professional and cultural consultant based in London. She has over 20 years of experience in various industries such as media, film, IT, education, and heritage management. Yvonne uses technology to educate people through storytelling and focuses on Igbo, African, and Black heritage.

Her work as a cultural consultant incorporates her expertise in higher education, information technology, digital media, applied linguistics, and cultural heritage. It also draws on her lived experience as a Nigerian, West African and Black british.

With the use of Igbo, African, and Black cultural storytelling, she provides nuanced perspectives on history to aid in understanding modern global interactions.

Yvonne ensures cultural sensitivity and accurate representation by fully engaging in all facets of a project, striving to avoid lazy stereotyping and represent the Igbo, Black, Africa, and its people in an authentic manner, be it in a fantasy world, real-life scenarios, or contemporary fiction.

She is a co-founder of the Annual International Igbo Conference , which partners with SOAS, University of London to promote the study of Igbo language and culture within the UK, and seeks to bring academics and members of the Igbo community together for the purpose of knowledge sharing and exchange.

She is the author of a bestselling illustrated Igbo dictionary for children. Yvonne is passionate about democratizing heritage through digital access and decolonizing colonial archives and museum collections. Companies and organizations can approach her for collaboration in projects.

Research Interests :

Black History, Decolonisation, and how museum objects, colonial records and private collections can be repurposed / reimagined and used as educational tools - either in storytelling or as virtual tours - for cultural Representation, and also to educate interested parties as well as the communities where the materials are from