Harry Kiiru, a 2026 African Cultural Studies Ph.D. graduate, has been appointed as a Lecturer in African American Studies within the Race and Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater.
Kiiru initially joined UW–Whitewater over the summer as an adjunct professor in African American Studies, where he taught Introduction to Black Culture, and has since transitioned into his current Lecturer position.
Kiiru’s scholarship focuses on the experiences and racialization of Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the United States, with particular attention to how African immigrants negotiate Blackness and their place within the U.S. racial landscape. His doctoral dissertation, The Culturally and Racially Body in Motion: How Sub-Saharan African Immigrants Become Black in the United States, examines these processes from the East African Students’ Airlift of the late 1950s and early 1960s through the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, post-independence migration, and the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement. His new position continues his work at the intersection of African and African American studies, bringing his interdisciplinary training and research into the classroom.