AFIAfrican Feminist Initiative

Dr. Anima Adjepong (pronouns: they/them) is a sociologist whose research examines culture, identities, and social change in West Africa and the diaspora. They received their PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin and an A.B. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University.

As a creative strategist, researcher, and teacher, Anima works to create and disseminate knowledge that drives self-reflection and encourages action for positive social change. Anima’s writings have appeared in popular outlets, academic journals, newsletters, and blogs. They have also written a book that illuminates how individuals and groups employ popular culture and art to break down barriers, advance social justice, and manifest anticolonial feminist realities.

As part of their commitment to making scholarship accessible, Dr. Adjepong is available to lead community workshops, give public lectures, and facilitate training programs.

This ethnographic study examines the Afropolitan projects of Ghanaians living in two cosmopolitan cities: Houston, Texas, and Accra, Ghana. Anima Adjepong’s focus shifts between the cities, exploring contests around national and pan-African cultural politics, race, class, sexuality, and religion. Focusing particularly on queer sexuality, Adjepong offers unique insight into the contemporary sexual politics of the Afropolitan class.

The book expands and complicates existing research by providing an in-depth transnational case study that not only addresses questions of cosmopolitanism, class, and racial identity but also considers how gender and sexuality inform the racialized identities of Africans in the United States and in Ghana. Bringing an understudied cohort of classprivileged Africans to the forefront, Adjepong offers a more fully realized understanding of the diversity of African lives.