One of the key areas through which African studies scholarship has imagined African everydays and African futures has been through attention to media. Attention to media and media audiences has brought scholars from a range of disciplines into conversation in ways that few topics in the past have been able to do. Scholarship on African media has been at the forefront of developing theoretical and intellectual agendas through which to understand rapidly changing realities on the African continent. The Kenyan mediasphere stands out as particularly central to many of these Africa-centred conversations about media. In this panel, we gather together a range of scholars and practitioners who have worked in and on popular media in Kenya. The panel will bring speakers from a range of disciplines together, and the discussion will be centred around a new publication by George Ogola, Popular Media in Kenyan History: Fiction and Newspapers as Political Actors (Palgrave, 2017). Responding to the book’s argument, and mapping new directions for the study of popular media in Kenya, will be scholars from a range of institutional and disciplinary homes. The panellists will respond to Ogola’s book, and the conversation will map new directions in the study of media. An important component of the panel will be to provide guidance to PhD and early career scholars about useful and important directions for future research. Participants: Chege Githiora (tbc), George Ogola, Grace A. Musila, Dina Ligaga, Dan Omanga (tbc), Njoki Wamai, David Kerr