Dr. Chinyere Osuji is Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies. She earned her MA from Harvard University and her PhD from UCLA. Prior to coming to the University of Maryland, she was at Rutgers University-Camden for eight years and a Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Africana Studies.

Osuji’s research examines how Blacks understand and navigate ethnoracial boundaries in social life. Her 2019 book with NYU Press, Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriage and the Meaning of Race, draws on over 100 qualitative interviews to understand these boundaries for Black-White couples in Brazil and the United States. She is currently writing a book about how Africans in the nursing profession navigate ethnoracial boundaries.

She has published in several academic journals, including Ethnic and Racial Studies, DuBois Review: Social Science Research on Race, Latino Studies, Contexts, and British Journal of Sociology. Her academic work has won awards from the American Sociological Association and the Population Association of America and has been supported by the National Science Foundation. Her work has been featured on the BBC and NPR and she has published op-eds in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Society Pages.

Her parents were born in Nigeria, so she calls both Chicago and Imo State home. She speaks fluent Spanish and Portuguese.