Professor Akwugo Emejulu
FAcSS, PhD, MPhil (distinction), BA (hons)
Department of Sociological Studies
Chair in Sociological Studies
Full contact details
Department of Sociological Studies
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Before entering academia, I worked in a variety of grassroots roles—as a community organiser, a trade union organiser and a participatory action researcher—in both the United States and in Britain.
I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of The New Institute in Hamburg, a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin and an inaugural winner of the Flax Foundation's Emma Goldman Prize.
I joined the Department of Sociological Studies in February 2024.
- Research interests
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As a political sociologist, I have research interests in two areas:
1. racial, gender and class inequalities in Europe and the United States
2. women of colour’s grassroots organising and activism.
Doctoral Supervision
I am interested in supervising PhD students in areas related to grassroots activism, community organising and social movements. I am also particularly interested in working with students who wish to use intersectional, critical race, feminist and/or post-structuralist methodologies and methods in their
research.External Supervisor, University of Warwick
- Sue Lemos, 'Pioneers of our own future: The lives and politics of queer Black people and people of colour in Britain'
- Oska Paul, 'Migrant-led responses to displacement in Athens: Men, masculinity and manhood'
- Adebayo Quadry-Adekanbi, ‘Queering African feminist activism’
- Shuzhuo Shi, ‘Covid-19, Sinophobia and the possibilities for racial solidarity’
- Shona Smith, ‘Black disabled women's lived experiences in Britain’
- Yuting Wu 'Absent Presence? British Chinese feminist activism since 1970'
Completed PhD Students
- Melody Howse, 'Black formations and the politics of space in Berlin' (Completed, November 2023)
- Cristina Asenjo Palma, 'Enhancing well-being: A matter of assets or rights?' (Completed, June 2023)
- Ashlee Christoffersen, 'The politics of intersectional practice: Representation, coalition and solidarity' (Completed, June 2020)
- Sara Lindores, 'Gender, class and ethno-Christian identities and the intergenerational transmission of sectarianism in Scotland' (Completed, October 2019)
- Geetha Marcus, From the margins to the centre: The educational experiences of Gypsy and Traveller girls in Scottish schools' (Completed, June 2016)
- Patricia Cacho, Race, rurality and Black and Minority Ethnic young people: Exploring the silences in Highland Scotland' (Completed, May 2016)
- Publications
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Books
- Schwarzer Feminismus und die Grenzen des Menschseins [Was bedeutet das alles?]. Reclam Verlag.
- Fugitive Feminism. Silver Press.
- To Exist is to Resist Black Feminism in Europe. Pluto Press (UK).
- Minority Women and Austerity Survival and Resistance in France and Britain. Policy Press.
- Community Development as Micropolitics Comparing Theories, Policies and Politics in America and Britain. Policy Press.
- Precarious solidarity: Women of colour’s activism in a fractured Europe. Manchester University Press.
Edited books
- Ambivalent Activism: Working with Contradiction, Hesitation and Doubt for Social Change. University of Bristol Press.
Journal articles
- The lonely activist: On being haunted. The Sociological Review, 72(1), 58-75.
- Intersectional Vulnerabilities and the Banality of Harm. Meridians, 22(1), 76-93.
- “Diversity Within”: The Problems with “Intersectional” White Feminism in Practice. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 30(2), 630-653.
- Ambivalence as Misfeeling, Ambivalence as Refusal. Post 45.
- The Black Feminism Remix Lab: on Black feminist joy, ambivalence and futures. Culture, Theory and Critique, 63(2-3), 236-243.
- Refusing politics as usual: mapping women of colour’s radical praxis in London and Amsterdam. Identities, 29(1), 9-26.
- The politics of exhaustion. City, 24(1-2), 400-406.
- Can Political Science Decolonise? A Response to Neema Begum and Rima Saini. Political Studies Review, 17(2), 202-206.
- Women as Sectarian Agents: Looking Beyond the Football Cliché in Scotland. European Journal of Women's Studies, 26(1), 39-53.
- Towards a radical digital citizenship in digital education. Critical Studies in Education, 60(1), 131-147.
- Austerity and the Politics of Becoming. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 56(S1), 109-119.
- Intersectionality and the politics of knowledge production. European Journal of Politics and Gender, 1(1-2), 17-36.
- On the problems and possibilities of feminist solidarity: The Women's March one year on. IPPR Progressive Review, 24(4), 267-273.
- Caring subjects: migrant women and the third sector in England and Scotland. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41(1), 36-54.
- Feminism for the 99%: towards a populist feminism?: Can Feminism for the 99% succeed as a new kind of populism?. Soundings.
- Minority women, austerity and activism. Race & Class, 57(2), 86-95.
- Neoliberalism With a Community Face? A Critical Analysis of Asset-Based Community Development in Scotland. Journal of Community Practice, 22(4), 430-450.
- On the Limits of Liberalism: Teaching Iris Marion Young in Scotland. Polity, 000-000.
- Moral Subjects in White Spaces: Impossible Solidarities. Sociology.
Reports
- Women of Colour Resist: Exploring Women of Colour’s Activism in Europe
- Schwarzer Feminismus und die Grenzen des Menschseins [Was bedeutet das alles?]. Reclam Verlag.
- Grants
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Co-creating Inclusive Intersectional Democratic Spaces across Europe (CCINDLE)
€3,325,433: Horizon Europe
Co-creating Inclusive Intersectional Democratic Spaces across Europe (CCINDLE) is a six-nation comparative research project exploring how ordinary citizens, activists and policymakers might co-create solutions to Europe’s crisis of democracy in Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Spain. My Co-PIs and I focus on three areas: 1. the emboldened far right and how they undermine democracy, particularly through political violence 2. feminist social movement and institutional resistances to far right groups 3. envisioning intersectional feminist futures for Europe.
My co-principal investigators for this project are: Mieke Verloo (Radboud), Elena Pavan (Trento), Andrea Krizsan (Central European University), Petra Meier (Antwerp), Conny Roggeband (Amsterdam), Johanna Kantola (Helsinki), Emanuela Lombardo (Madrid Complutense),Marta Rawluzsko (Warsaw) and Elzbieta Korolczuk (Södertörn).
Women of Colour Resist
$126,682: Open Society Foundations
Women of Colour Resist is a six-nation comparative research project that examines how women of colour activists in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Spain strategise, organise and mobilise in illiberal Europe. Women of colour, oftentimes operating in hostile contexts, work in innovative ways to advance their political interests. This project aims to make visible this creative work and to map the processes by which women of colour undertake their grassroots activism against austerity, against the far right and for migrant's rights. My co-principal investigator for this project is Leah Bassel (Coventry).
Read the project report and the executive summary
in Danish, English, Flemish, French, German and Spanish.