“I wanted to work on poetry/literature but a huge sense of injustice and the need to inquire into the roots of inequality took over,” she says, explaining what made her pursue a career in history, to The History Vault. “I was determined to make African-American historian and activist Anna Julia Cooper proud.”

She’s currently researching transnational history and the connection between history, collective memory and geopolitics in relation to British and French colonial pasts.

Dr. Otele hopes this award makes way for black women and women of color to shake more tables in academia and in history.