Holly Okonkwo

Biography

Dr. Okonkwo will join the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Critical Gender Studies Program in July 2021. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Riverside in 2015, followed by a two- year postdoctoral fellowship in the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for the Study of (in)Equality at the University of Denver. In 2017, Dr. Okonkwo was awarded a two-year National Science Foundation Research Fellowship award. During the 2020-21 academic year, she will be an American Association of University Women fellow at Claremont Graduate University. Prior to her appointment at UC San Diego, she was an assistant professor at Purdue University. In her work, Dr. Okonkwo investigates how knowledge production and technical practices are culturally constructed and conditioned by the politics of race, gender, class and coloniality in the United States, Ghana and Nigeria. This research centers the experiential knowledge of women computer scientists and technologists from the African Diaspora and directly engages with dominant narratives about technology. A highly rated instructor, Dr. Okonkwo will teach undergraduate and graduate courses on technology and culture and will develop specialty courses on feminist science studies.