Professor Uju Anya: Profile of a Nigerian-American who shook British monarchy at Queens’ death

Uju Anya, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, United States has been trending for wishing Queen Elizabeth, the deceased Queen of England excruciating pain in death as the pain she vicariously inflicted on Biafran children during the Nigeria civil war.

Het tweet since it was said that her Royal Majesty was on the lap of her earthly journey has divided humanity in social media. Billionaire businessman, Jeff Bezos, was among those who knocked the Professor for not showing sympathy for the dying and the bereaved.

Yet, while Bezos and some other censured Anya for her ‘inconsiderate tweet’, some others defended her action, hailing her as a purveyor of truth and conscience of millions abused by the colonial masters of Britain.

But who is Professor Anya? Below is profile of the fiery professor who recently openly admitted to being a lesbian.

Uju Anya is a professor of applied linguistics and a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her critical discourse studies primarily examine race, gender, sexual, and social class identities in new Language learning through the experiences of African American students.

She was born on August 4, 1976, to a Nigerian dad and a Trinidadian mother. Her dad is from Enugu state, south eastern Nigeria, one of the theatres of mass killings during the Nigeria civil war which she referenced in her tweet.

Uju is also famous for her support of the LGBTQ community. She has publicly declared she is a lesbian after her divorce from her husband.

Academic qualifications:

2011 PhD, Applied Linguistics – University of California, Los Angeles

2001 M.A., Brazilian Studies – Brown University

1998 B.A., Romance Languages – Dartmouth College

Uju started as a Teaching fellow with the Phillips Academy Andover in 1998, where she teaches introductory, intermediate-level high school immersion Spanish classes.

In 2001, she became a visiting lecturer in the Portuguese Language at the Dartmouth College Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Uju coordinated the Portuguese program’s curriculum and pedagogy in this capacity, including cutting-edge multimedia resources, inquiry, social emphasis, and critical language studies emphasis on Afro-Brazilian culture.

She joined the Rassias Center for World Languages and Cultures as a Master Teacher in 2003. She taught and designed English Language immersion courses for executives in Tokyo, Japan, and Portuguese Language for U.S. executives in Brazil.

From 2005-2007, Uju worked as a Lecturer of Spanish and Portuguese Languages at the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

She later worked with the UCLA Department of Applied Linguistics as a Lecturer, Applied Linguistics & Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). In that capacity, Uju taught graduate and undergraduate applied linguistics, TESL, and service-learning in TESL courses, as well as academic writing and research skills.

In another capacity, Uju was appointed as an assistant professor of clinical education at the College of Education at Pennsylvania State University.

In 2016, Uju was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Second Language Learning, Department of Curriculum & Instruction Research Affiliate, Center for the Study of Higher Education at The College of Education at Pennsylvania State University.

She is currently a Professor of Second Language Acquisition at the Department of Modern Languages Associate at Carnegie Mellon University.

Uju was married before her divorce. She had two children with her former lover.

Uju announced her divorce via a Twitter post, stating that she and her spouse have just finalized their divorce paperwork. She also indicated that she is free and has no plans to marry again.

She has amassed many awards including:

Penn State College of Education Outstanding Teaching Award

American Association for Applied Linguistics First Book Award

ACTFL/Middlebury Research Forum Invited Scholar

USC Rossier School of Education Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Award

Dartmouth College Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellowship

UCLA Graduate Division Dissertation Year Fellowship (declined)

Centro Latino for Literacy Manos Amigas Volunteer of the Year Award

Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship for Doctoral Studies at UCLA

Irene Diamond Fellowship for Graduate Study at Brown University

Phillips Academy Andover Spanish Teaching Fellowship