Uju Anya, a university professor and researcher, focuses on applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, and discourse studies. Her work delves into race, gender, sexual, and social class identities within new language learning, particularly among African American students.
Recently, Carnegie Mellon University secured a Mellon Foundation grant for Anya’s New Directions Fellowship. This fellowship aims to provide her with training in entertainment technology and game design, with a focus on creating innovative projects in Brazil, Colombia, and across the Americas.
In September 2022, Uju Anya stirred controversy with a podcast appearance where she criticized Queen Elizabeth II, sparking a Twitter firestorm. Carnegie Mellon University distanced itself from her comments without specifying any disciplinary actions.
As part of the New Directions Fellowship, Anya collaborates with Jessica Hammer, the Thomas and Lydia Moran Associate Professor of Learning Science, on interdisciplinary research topics and curriculum development.
Anya’s broader goal involves creating multilingual educational games within online virtual reality spaces. These games are designed to help Black students form more meaningful connections to the cultures and languages they are studying.
Uju Anya Wikipedia Profile
| Real Name: | Uju Anya |
| Date Of Birth: | August 4, 1976 |
| Age: | 47 years old @ 2023 |
| State Of Origin: | Ennugu State, Nigeria |
| Nationality: | Nigerian |
| Marital Status: | Married |
| Children | 2 |
| Occupation: | Professor |
| Net Worth: | Under Est. |
| Education: | PhD, (Applied Linguistics – University of California, Los Angeles) M.A., (Brazilian Studies – Brown University) And B.A. Romance Languages – Dartmouth College |
| Parents: | Under Rev. |
Uju Anya Biography
Dr. Uju Anya’s appointment to the faculty of the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University is fortunate. In her function as an associate professor of second language acquisition, she teaches and performs research in the fields of critical applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, new language learning, and critical race and discourse studies.
At Carnegie Mellon University, Uju Anya is a professor of applied linguistics and a researcher. Her critical discourse research primarily focuses on how African American students experience their racial, gendered, sexual, and social class identities when learning new languages.
On August 4, 1976, she was born to a Trinidadian mother and a Nigerian father. Enugu is the place of origin for Uju. According to Info9jatv, Uju is well known for being an ally of the LGBTQ community. She publicly came out as a lesbian following her divorce from her husband.
Uju married before getting divorced. She and her ex-boyfriend had two children. On Twitter, Uju declared her split from her husband, claiming that the proper paperwork had just been completed. She added that she is unmarried and has no plans to settle down.
On September 8, 2022, Uju Anya sent an incendiary tweet in response to the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, which caused her to become entangled in a web of controversy. Many Twitter users responded negatively to the remark, and some of them thought her viewpoints were rude.
The tweet, which made reference to the Queen as “a chief monarch of a thieving raping murderous empire,” was later deleted for violating the rules of the microblogging service. She added, “I heard the chief emperor of an empire that steals, ra*ps, and commits genocide is finally dying. May she endure horrible pain.
Age and Date of Birth
She is currently at the age of 47 years old at the year of publishing this article. She was born on August 4, 1976.
State of Origin
Uju Anya is from Enugu State, one of the most popular state in Nigeria which is 90% occupied by the Igbo People.
Career
As an associate professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Uju Anya is responsible for the research and academic administration in the department of Modern Languages. Her primary research interests include critical applied linguistics, critical sociolinguistics, and critical discourse studies.
These research subjects look at the roles that racial, gendered, sexual, and social class identities play in the acquisition of new linguistic skills from the viewpoints of African American students.
Her areas of interest include service-learning and civic engagement in secondary and tertiary level language programs, applied linguistics as a social justice practice, intercultural communication, diversity, equity, and inclusion in instructional methods and curriculum design, as well as these.
She has a doctorate in applied linguistics. Racialized identities in second language learning, a book by Dr. Anya titled Speaking Blackness in Brazil, earned the 2019 American Association for Applied Linguistics First Book Award.
This award is given to a researcher whose first book demonstrates outstanding achievement and substantially advances the field. This book is the first to objectively explore the experience of language learning among African Americans from a single author’s perspective.
It examines how students create and navigate different identities in multilingual contexts and offers suggestions on how a multilingual approach (such plurilingual practice or translanguaging) may be utilized to successfully teach language.
Her second book, a co-edited collection titled Racial equity on college campuses: Connecting research to practice, will be released by SUNY Press towards the end of 2021.
Dr. Anya has held a variety of academic positions in the past, including assistant professor of second language learning in Curriculum and Instruction at Penn State University, assistant professor of teacher education in TESOL at the University of Southern California, visiting assistant professor and faculty director of the Dartmouth College Portuguese language study abroad program in Salvador-Bahia, Brazil, and lecturer in applied linguistics, TESOL, and Portuguese.
She graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in Romance Languages, Brown University with a Master of Arts in Brazilian Studies, and UCLA with a Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics.
- 2020 Penn State College of Education Outstanding Teaching Award
- 2010 UCLA Graduate Division Dissertation Year Fellowship (declined)
- 2008 Centro Latino for Literacy Manos Amigas Volunteer of the Year Award
- 2007 Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship for Doctoral Studies at UCLA
- 1999 Irene Diamond Fellowship for Graduate Study at Brown University
- 1998 Phillips Academy Andover Spanish Teaching Fellowship
- 2019 American Association for Applied Linguistics First Book Award
- 2019 ACTFL/Middlebury Research Forum Invited Scholar
- 2015 USC Rossier School of Education Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Award
- 2010 Dartmouth College Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellowship
Personal Life
Uju Anya was once married to a man and had two children with him before they divorced in 2021. She shared the news of her divorce on Twitter, mentioning that the legal process was just completed.
Following the divorce, Uju Anya openly identified as a lesbian and currently prefers to date women. As of now, she is not married. This information has been gathered from various sources, including The Famous Naija, DNB Stories, and NewsWireNGR.
In Conclusion
The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, also lent his backing to condemn the divisive tweet. Uju Anya remained steadfast in her opinion despite the barrage of criticism.
She made reference to a tweet from a U.S. millionaire using the Igbo phrase “Otoro gba gbue gi,” which means “May you rot by your stinking intestines and die from uncontrollable diarrhea.”
She also replies to criticism she receives from other online users. In another tweet, she stated, “If anyone expects me to demonstrate anything other than contempt for the monarch who oversaw a regime that encouraged the genocide that killed and uprooted half my family and the implications of which those alive now are still fighting to overcome.”
Meanwhile, Carnegie Mellon University has distanced itself from Uju Anya’s actions. The organization issued a statement saying, “We do not condone the disrespectful and inappropriate message shared by Uju Anya today on her own social media account.”
The basic goal of higher education is to encourage free speech, but the views represented here in no way represent the values of the organization or the standard of discourse that we hope to encourage.
Source: whoiswriter.com
