Dr. Oduro-Opuni received a Ph.D. in International Letters and Cultures along with an African Studies Certificate from Arizona State University. She earned an M.A. in German from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and a B.A. in Media and Communication Sciences from the Universität Hamburg in Germany, where she was born and raised. In addition to German and English, she also speaks Twi. Her work focuses on Black German studies and includes intersectional discussions on transnationalism, colonialism, migration, minoritized cultures, and multiculturalism. She engages German-language contexts by drawing on approaches rooted in Black thought and theories as well as postcolonial studies. Her research explores so-called abolitionist German-language discourses of the 18th century and early 19th century that claimed to articulate nuanced critiques of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Among her publications:
- 2019: “German Abolitionism: Kotzebue and the Transnational Debate on Slavery” in a special issue of the Journal of Transnational American Studies on “Transnational Black Politics and Resistance: From Enslavement to Obama.”
- 2021: “Lessing and Kotzebue: A Black Studies Approach to Reading the Eighteenth Century” in a Goethe Yearbook volume on “(New) Directions in 18th Century German Studies.”
- 2022: “At the Expense of Black Humanity: White Abolitionist Performativity” in a special issue of German Quarterly on Black German studies.
- 2023: “Four Black German Women: On Being Othered, Feeling Anger at Whiteness, Practicing Joy, and Finding Belonging in Solitude,” a co-authored chapter in the edited volume When Will the Joy Come?: Black Women in the Ivory Tower.
- Forthcoming: “Using Black Bodies in White German Abolitionist Theater” in the German Studies Review.
- Forthcoming: “Pitfalls of White Abolitionism: A ‘Play’ on Africa” in The Cambridge History of German Opera to the Early Nineteenth Century.