Giramata

Giramata (amata), PhD (she/they) is an anti/ ante-disciplinary artist, community organizer and Assistant Professor in the department of Gender Studies. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Gender and Women Studies with a minor in African and African Diaspora Studies from the University of Arizona. They hold a BA in Development Economics and Policy and BA in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies from DePauw University. Their work sits in the fields of global Black feminisms, anti-colonial Black visual Arts and Critical Trauma Studies. Their dissertation research developed a Black Feminist visual reading practice that extends beyond legacies of coloniality and interrogated the relationship between practices of Black memory and photography through Rwandan audio-theatrical performances of ikinamico. Their work considers Black feminist traditions that render ordinary practices such as play as vital to the lives of Black people globally. Consequently, Giramata’s work seeks to highlight and amplify the intellectual connections between the continent of Africa and the Black diaspora.

Giramata’s work has been awarded the 2024 Cheryl A. Wall Paper Prize at the Black Women Studies Association. Additionally, they are part of the 2024 cohort of the Women of Color Leadership Project at the National Women Studies Association. Giramata currently serves as the Chair of the Transnational Feminisms Caucus at the National Women Studies Association as well as the convener of the Black African Girlhood Caucus. 

As part of Giramata’s political principles and commitments and belief in bridging the gap between the academe and community through political education, Giramata started and continues to run the first and only free Black feminist community library in Kigali, Rwanda -Kamaliza Reads and is the convener of the only Black feminist collective in Rwanda, Sistah Circle Collective. She is the convener of the Queer and Trans Futures conference (started in 2020) housed at the University of Arizona; a conference that aims at highlighting and centering Black queer and trans scholarship within and outside the academe. Their work has appeared in the Journal of Girlhood Studies, CNBC Africa, RFI France, The NewTimes Rwanda and the East African among others.