Chrystel Oloukoï - Department of Geography, University of Washington

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, graduate students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.Today’s conversation is with Chrystel Oloukoï, who teaches in the Department of Geography at University of Washington and who will be a CIFAR Global Studies Scholar from 2026-2028. Their research focuses on cinema studies, urban politics and history, and the place of gender and sexuality in Black life across the diaspora. In this conversation, we discuss how Black Studies questions challenge languages of nation and state, the complicated stories of diaspora and Black identity, and the expansive politics of Black Studies sensibilities and critical frames.