Uju Anya is a university professor and researcher in applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, and critical discourse studies. She was born in Nigeria and currently resides in the United States.
Her primary research focus is on the roles that race, gender, sexuality, and social class identities play in the process of learning a new language through the experiences of African American students.
At the moment, she is serving as an associate professor of second language acquisition within the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University, where she both teaches and does research.
Racialized identities in second language learning: Speaking blackness in Brazil (Routledge 2017), written by Uju Anya, was selected as the winner of the 2019 American Association for Applied Linguistics First Book Award. This award is given to a scholar whose first book represents outstanding work and makes an exceptional contribution to the field.
10 Facts About Uju Anya
- Uju Anya was born to a Nigerian father on August 4, 1976, in Enugu State, Nigeria. The mother was born in Trinidad & Tobago.
- Uju Anya is an out lesbian who embraces her identity. She had previously admitted in an interview that she had feelings for both guys and girls when she was a teen. While at university, she dated both men and women.
- At the age of 28, she was feeling the pressure to tie the knot. She soon married, although it was no secret that she was bisexual. In 2021, after they had been living apart for a total of four years, the divorce was finally formalised. Her former spouse is the father of both of her children. Anya is not a religious person.
- She is a polyglot and can speak six other languages, including English, Igbo, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. Portuguese is her sixth language.
- Uju Anya has a height of 5 feet and 5 inches, although it is unknown what her weight is.
- In 1998, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Romance languages from Dartmouth College. Her concentration was in French and Spanish. In 2001, she graduated with a master’s degree in Brazilian studies from Brown University. In addition to that, she received her doctorate in applied linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2011.
- In 1998, Uju Anya began her professional life by working as a Teaching fellow at the Phillips Academy Andover. There, she was responsible for instructing introductory and intermediate level high school immersion Spanish subjects.
- At the moment, Uju Anya is working at Carnegie Mellon University as an associate professor of second language acquisition. Her areas of expertise include sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and the acquisition of second languages, and she focuses in particular on issues pertaining to racial, sexual, gender, and social class identities in educational settings including language learning. In addition to that, she is an expert in diversity, equity, and inclusion in the establishment of educational policies and curricula.
- Following the passing of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8, 2022, Uju Anya sent out a tweet that many people found to be offensive. This led to her becoming embroiled in a web of scandal. Even Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, joined the chorus of people who condemned the offensive post.
- It is estimated that Uju Anya has a net worth of one million dollars.
