About Me

Greetings!

Thank you for visiting my site. 

I am an African Diaspora scholar firmly rooted in Africana Studies. My most recent work is an ethnographic study of selfhood and community affiliations among Ceylon Africans (a.k.a. 'Ceylon Kaffirs') in the Puttalam district of Sri Lanka. This project also addresses processes of racialization with attention to place, coloniality and militarism, while seeking to identify Africana espitemology in this community through their memory work, performance, and formulas of identity. My study draws upon the philosophies and methodologies of Africana  Studies, and draws upon theories of African diaspora, Black geographies, African aesthetics, performance, and memory. 

I earned a BA in Global Studies and Women's Studies from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, an MA in Ethnic Studies (with emphasis in Africana Studies) from San Francisco State University in San Francisco, CA, an MA and PhD in African American Studies from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. 

My research interests are broad and include other areas of focus such as the global dimensions of Black Power politics, Black Geographies outside the US, Pan-Africanism, Afrodiasporic spiritual practices, Africana Digital Humanities, and Africana pedagogy. 

I am an associate professor of Africana Studies at San Diego State University. My teaching involves a wide array of lower and upper division as well as graduate level courses including: Research Methods in Africana Studies, Introduction to Africana Studies, Black Urban Experience, Africana Intellectual Thought, The Black Family, Cultural Patterns and African American Identity, Research Methods, and Black Geographies in and outside the US. The scope of my work and research interests also has me affiliated with the Department of Women's Studies  as an affiliate graduate faculty member. From fall 2022 to spring 2026, I have served as the co-director of the Digital Humanities Initiative at SDSU. In this capacity, I have focused on capacity building in the area of Digital Ethnic Studies to bring DH tools, discourse, and understanding to faculty in the distinct Ethnic Studies academic units at SDSU. You can read more about this at this link. 

Between 2019 and 2025, I was part of the dynamic team of Professors of Equity in Education designing and delivering community building and climate changing programming to the campus community. 

Check out my most recent publications:

"Being for Self: Siddi and Ceylon African Assertions of African Being" in Africology and the African Diaspora: Agency, Culture, and Change, ed.Molefi K. Asante, Bloomsbury Academic, 2026.

"The Western Indian Ocean African Diaspora and #BlackLivesMatter: Situating Siddi, Sheedi, and Ceylon African Struggles and Politics" in the Journal of Black Studies, 2022.

"StoryMap(ping) Black Urban Experiences: Toward an Africana DH Subfield Through Research and Pedagogy" in the Journal of African American Studies, 2020.

Warmly, 

Sureshi