Akissi Britton

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Department of Africana Studies

Dr. Akissi Britton is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her broad research interests include African Diasporic religions, namely Lucumí/Santería/Orisa traditions, the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender and religion; as well as Black digital studies, Black feminisms, diaspora theory, and the impact of gentrification on diasporic religious communities. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, tentatively titled The Children of Cotton: African American Lucumí Finding and Losing Home in Diaspora, which examines an African American community of Lucumí practitioners, their engagements with other orisa practitioners throughout the African Diaspora, and the role of race, ethnicity, and gender in these engagements. Dr. Britton employs both traditional and digital ethnographic methods in her research to examine how orisa practitioners navigate difference as they build religious communities both online and off. She is a Lucumí priest, a scholar, a mama, and a binge-watching queen!