ProfessorSujatha Fernandes

Sujatha Fernandes is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney, which she joined in 2016. Previously she was a Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Before this, she was a Wilson-Cotsen Fellow at Princeton University’s Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts (2003 – 2006). She has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago.

Her work explores social and labor movements, participatory media and art, global Black cultures, migrant workers, and climate storytelling. Fernandes is the author of five books, including Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Duke University Press, 2006), Who Can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela (Duke University Press, 2010), Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation (Verso, 2011), Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling (Oxford University Press, 2017) and The Cuban Hustle: Culture, Politics, Everyday Life (Duke University Press, 2020). She is completing a new book based on ethnographic research, entitled Staying Afloat: Migrants and Work in Global Cities (under contract to UNC Press). She has published articles in many edited volumes and journals, including Signs, Contexts, Latin American Politics & Society, Ethnography, and Anthropological Quarterly. Her work has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, and Chinese. 

Fernandes is a contributor to The New York Times,The Nation, Orion Magazine, and other publications. She has been featured in New York’s Daily News, and has appeared on ABC Australia, NPR, MSNBC, American Public Radio, BBC, and other news outlets globally. She is an editorial board member of Transition: The Magazine of Africa and the Diaspora. She is on the advisory board of a series on Race, Labor Migration, and the Law at the University of California Press. She has been awarded grants from the Australia Research Council (ARC), the Mellon Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), among others.