Pamela Nwakanma is a 2022 PhD in political science and African and African American studies from Harvard University, who will be joining the department of UC Irvine as an assistant professor in Fall 2024. She studies international development and democratic politics in Africa and Afro-diasporic communities in the Americas. She is presently a Leading Edge Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies, where she helps to coordinate research and policy strategies for People Powered.
Her work has been published in journals such as Perspectives on Politics and Politics, Groups, and Identities, as well as edited volumes such as the Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies and Routledge’s African Scholars and Intellectuals in the North American Academy: Reflections of Exile and Migration. Her interdisciplinary research thus far has won multiple awards from the American Political Science Association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the African Studies Association. Her work has also been featured in public media outlets such as Break the Boxes, Collateral Benefits, and Voyages Africana.
Her work on the relationship between Black Lives Matters Movement and EndSARS in Nigeria, which shows how Black feminists’ articulations of justice helped to raise awareness about police brutality and improve government accountability, was recently published in Perspectives on Politics.