Distinguished Lecture Series: Kwame Edwin Otu
The New York Academy of Sciences presents scholar Kwame Edwin Otu in a distinguished lecture exploring identity, culture, and social theory.
Why we picked this
Otu's scholarship on queer African life challenges Western frameworks for understanding sexuality and identity — this lecture brings that perspective to a science-oriented audience.
Kwame Edwin Otu, a scholar whose work sits at the intersection of African studies, gender theory, and social thought, delivers a distinguished lecture at the New York Academy of Sciences. His research examines how identity categories travel across cultural contexts — and how they distort when forced into frameworks developed elsewhere.
Otu’s academic work has focused on queer life in Ghana, challenging both Western assumptions about African sexuality and local narratives that treat queerness as foreign import. The NYAS setting is notable: it places cultural and social theory in conversation with a scientific institution, reflecting the increasingly porous boundary between these domains.
Free and open to the public.