Kwame Edwin Otu
Associate Professor, Institute of African-American and African Studies at UVa

Kwame Edwin Otu is an Associate Professor in the Institute of African-American and African Studies. His research transects issues of sexual citizenship, gender, human rights NGOs, and neoliberal racial formations in postcolonial Africa, traversing the anthropology of Africa, race, gender and sexuality, queer of color theorizing, critical human rights studies, revolutionary forms of blackness and black aesthetics, and Afrofuturist practice.

In addition to his academic work, Otu has collaborated with Akosua Adoma Owusu, the award-winning Ghanaian-American filmmaker, to produce the film, Reluctantly Queer. It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year and was featured as part of the New Director New Films series held under the auspices of the Film Society Lincoln Center and MoMA. Otu completed his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at Syracuse University (2016).