Morenike Alugo Is Using Research and Technology to Rethink How We Support Young People

For Morenike Alugo, understanding young people has never been simply about looking at what happens inside a classroom.

It is also about understanding the world around them — the technology they use, the communities they grow up in, the relationships they build, the opportunities available to them and the systems that shape their choices.

That interest has taken the Nigerian researcher from studying Psychology at the University of Lagos to pursuing a PhD in Prevention Science at Rutgers University–Camden in the United States, where her work sits at the intersection of youth wellbeing, technology, mental health, civic engagement and prevention.

Today, Alugo is researching questions that are becoming increasingly important as technology becomes deeply embedded in young people’s lives. What does digital life mean for their wellbeing? How can schools and communities better support young people? And how might the experiences young people have today influence the adults they eventually become?

At Rutgers, her research interests include youth digital wellbeing and mental health, positive youth development, digital resilience, civic development and engagement, social media and emerging technologies, as well as school and community contexts of adolescent development.

But her interest in these questions did not begin in the United States.

Alugo studied Psychology at the University of Lagos from 2012 to 2016, graduating with a CGPA of 4.52/5.0. She later received the university’s First Class Honours in Psychology award.

Her undergraduate years were not only about academic performance. She served as Welfare Secretary and later Treasurer of the National Association of Psychology Students at the University of Lagos, taking on responsibilities that included student welfare, budgeting and organising departmental activities. She was also involved in organising a five-day conference focused on mental health.

Her early research interests were already pointing towards the issues she would continue exploring.

She contributed to research on the adaptation and validation of a screening tool for the early detection of disruptive behaviour disorders in schools. She also worked on research examining the burden of care and experience of stigma among caregivers of people living with chronic mental illness in Lagos.

After university, Alugo continued to work across both education and mental health.

As an Assistant School Coordinator at Pemog Fort Montessori School in Lagos, she worked on classroom policies, instructional approaches and the integration of technology into learning. Later, at Olive Prime Psychological Services in Abuja, she provided mental health support to inpatients, led psychoeducational group sessions and worked in a high-stress clinical environment.

She also became increasingly interested in what technology could make possible for young people.

From 2020 to 2023, Alugo worked as a Research Assistant at the Virtual Human Computer Interaction Lab at Lagos Business School. There, she contributed to mixed-methods research involving virtual reality and game-based interventions designed to foster empathy and character development among adolescents.

She recruited more than 200 participants, developed surveys and focus-group protocols, and worked with multidisciplinary teams combining psychology, technology and pedagogy.

She also served as a Character Mentor during a school-based Character Education Game Jam, working with teenagers on identity, discrimination, empathy and compassion.

That work contributed to research examining virtual reality game jams as a character-development tool in and beyond the classroom, published in Research in Human Development.

It was an early example of the direction her work would take: not simply asking how young people interact with technology, but exploring whether technology can be deliberately designed to support their development.

Her research has since expanded into the wider question of what digital life means for adolescent wellbeing.

At Rutgers, Alugo conducts research on child and adolescent mental health, digital wellbeing and prevention-focused interventions. She has worked on research examining school connectedness and adolescent mental health in the context of frequent social media use, as well as research exploring youth digital resilience in social media use.

But her work has never been confined to technology.

In 2024, while working as a Research Associate at Johns Hopkins University, Alugo led a community-based air-quality monitoring project focused on environmental justice and youth engagement. She trained and supervised more than 20 high school students in GIS tools, helping them map pollution in underserved areas and use environmental data to support equity-focused policy recommendations.

Her work at Rutgers has similarly extended into community research.

As a Community First Fellow, she supported research focused on housing, property ownership and neighbourhood conditions in Camden. She worked with community partners to gather, organise and interpret housing data and contributed to outputs designed to support local services, advocacy and community decision-making.

Through the Walter Rand Institute, she also conducted research examining how socioeconomic factors and social capital relate to substance use and healthcare utilisation in Southern New Jersey. Her work included demographic analysis and contributions to a community health equity report examining barriers to colorectal cancer screening.

Across these different projects, a common interest has remained: understanding the conditions that influence people’s lives and identifying ways to intervene before challenges become more difficult to address.

That is at the heart of Prevention Science, the field in which Alugo is now completing her PhD.

Her current research is also taking her into an area that may seem different at first: civic participation.

In 2026, Alugo was selected as a Rutgers Democracy Lab Summer Research Fellow. Her ongoing project, School-Based Participation and Adult Democratic Engagement in the United States, examines whether adolescent participation in school-based activities predicts adult voting and volunteering.

Using restricted-use Add Health data and sibling fixed-effects models, the research looks at whether participation during adolescence may be connected to civic engagement later in life.

The question is simple, but its implications are much bigger: What happens when young people learn to participate? Could joining a club, team or other school activity help young people develop habits of engagement that remain with them into adulthood? And if so, what does that tell us about the role schools can play beyond academic education?

The project adds another dimension to Alugo’s broader interest in youth development. Her work is increasingly concerned not just with whether young people are doing well now, but with the experiences and environments that may shape who they become later.

That breadth is already reflected in her growing research record.

In 2026, she has presented or had research accepted for presentation on adolescent mental health, extracurricular participation, psychological wellbeing and youth digital resilience at conferences including the Society for Prevention Research and the International Communication Association.

She has also received a 2026 seed research grant from the Rutgers Democracy Lab, a Minority Travel Award for the Society for Prevention Research Conference, the Walter Rand Institute Graduate Research Scholarship and the 2024 Rutgers Graduate Research Paper Competition award.

Yet the impressive part of Alugo’s journey is not simply the number of publications, conferences or awards attached to her name.

It is the range of settings in which she has chosen to do the work.

A classroom in Lagos, a mental health setting in Abuja, a virtual reality research lab, a community mapping project in the United States, a neighbourhood research initiative, and now, a research project examining how the experiences of teenagers might influence civic participation years later.

Her Nigerian experience remains an important part of that journey.

Before moving into her current doctoral work in the United States, Alugo had already spent years working in Nigerian schools, mental health settings, research environments and community organisations. She also volunteered with Beyond the Classroom Foundation and Salt and Light Teens Outreach, where her work included outreach, social media and community engagement.

Those experiences give context to the questions she is asking today.

Young people in Nigeria and elsewhere are growing up amid rapid technological change while navigating mental health concerns, educational pressures, inequality and changing forms of social interaction.

Understanding those challenges requires more than looking at young people individually. It requires looking at the systems around them, their schools, their communities, their digital spaces, their relationships and the opportunities they have to participate and develop.

That is why Alugo’s work spans psychology, technology, public health, education, data and community-engaged research rather than staying within a single discipline.

She is not simply studying what happens when young people encounter problems.

She is interested in the conditions that come before those problems, and in the factors that might help young people develop differently.

In a world where technology is changing how young people learn, communicate and understand themselves, that work is becoming increasingly relevant.

The questions Alugo is asking are not only academic questions. They are questions for educators trying to understand their students, parents raising children in an increasingly digital world, policymakers designing youth programmes, technology developers creating products young people will use, and communities thinking about what young people need not only to succeed today, but to become active participants in society tomorrow.

From her undergraduate years studying Psychology at the University of Lagos to her current doctoral research at Rutgers, Morenike Alugo has continued to follow the same instinct: understand people, understand the environments around them, and use evidence to find ways to make those environments better.

Her work is a reminder that supporting young people is not only about responding when something goes wrong.

Sometimes, it is about asking better questions early enough.

And then using what we learn to build a world in which young people have a better chance to thrive.