Julia Chinyere Oparah

Julia Chinyere Oparah, formerly Julia Sudbury, is a professor and department chair of Ethnic Studies at Mills College in Oakland California, where she also played a major role in establishing its Queer Studies Program. She is an activist-scholar, a community organizer, and an intellectual focused on producing relevant scholarship in accompaniment to social justice movements.

Education

Oparah graduated with her bachelor's degree with honors from the University of Cambridge Clare College in 1989 and studied modern and medieval languages and literature—Spanish and German. Later she received a diploma with distinction in community practice from Luton University in 1991. She continued her studies and received two master's degrees, one from the University of Cambridge Clare college in Modern and Medieval Languages-Spanish and Germanic 1993, and another with distinction from the University of Warwick from the Centre for Race Relations in Race and Ethnic Studies in 1994, and she completed her studies at Warwick in 1997 with her PhD in sociology.

Teaching career

Her teaching career began in the spring of 1997 at UC Berkeley, followed by Mills College that same year as a visiting assisting professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies. She also lectured in the Department of Women's Studies at UC Berkeley in the spring of 1998, and the department of Community Studies at UC Santa Cruz. In the fall of 1999 she was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in Canada in the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies. Meanwhile, she was also assistant professor at Mills College from the fall of 1998–2001 in the Department of Ethnic Studies, where she later became associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies from 2001 to 2006. Meanwhile, Oparah was also Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, Equity and Diversity, and the Department of Social Work at the University of Toronto from 2004 to 2006. Where she also received the Rockefeller Fellowship in Sex, Race and Globalization in 2002. From 2006 to the present, Oparah has been a professor in the department of Ethnic Studies at Mills College, where she has also been the chair of the department since 2008.

Currently, Oparah is provost dean of the faculty, and professor of ethnic studies at Mills college, where she has been teaching since 1997. Prior to this, she was the associate provost at Mills. She has also played a leading role in the establishment of Mills' Public Health and Health Equity program, as well as serving as chair of the Colleges Gender Expression and Identity Initiative. She also established the Retention, and Academic Success and Advising Committee.

Aside from her role as a professor and provost dean of the faculty, Oparah also oversees the Art Museum, the Olin Library, Mills College Children School, Office of Institutional Research and the Office of Learning, Advising and Balance. She has also chaired the colleges Gender Expression and Identity Initiative, which has led to the development of a report on improving the experiences of gender fluid and transgender students at Mills.

Awards and honors

• Black Women and the Racial Politics of Childbirth, Quigley Summer Research Award 2011.
• Sarlo Award, 2009-2010
• Eugene E. Trefethen Chair, 2008-2009
• Mary S. Metz Professorship for excellence in teaching, 2007-2008
• Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, Equity and Diversity, University of Toronto, 2004-2006
• Academic Initiative Fund, Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives, University of Toronto, 2005
• Association of American University Women Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2002-2003
• Rockefeller Humanities Residency Fellowship, University of Arizona, Tucson, 2002-2003
• Gaea Foundation Summer Residency, 2002
• Mills College Faculty Travel Award, 2001–2002, 2000–2001, 1998-1999
• Meg Quigley Award, Women's Studies Program, Mills College, Summer 2002, 1999, 1998
• European Economic and Social Research Council, Research Studentship Competition, 1993-1997