Originally from Paris, France, Sophie Marie Niang completed her undergraduate degree from Cambridge in 2019 (HSPS, Sociology and Social Anthropology double track), and her MA from Goldsmiths in 2020 (Gender, Media, and Culture).
Sophie's undergraduate dissertation focused on Black feminisms and the management of identity in France, looking at the 1970s' Coordination des femmes noire, and the contemporary Afrofeminist nebula (including the Mwasi Collective). For her MA dissertation, she looked at the sound of Afro trap and other forms of African influenced Francophone rap music to think about worldmaking, masculinities and liminality. Her PhD was funded by an ESRC studentship, and uses an approach informed by queer theory/queer of colour critique (El-Tayeb, Muñoz) and the work of Deleuze and Guattari to study the lines of flight traced by black worldmaking practices in contemporary France, focusing on art, activism, and popular culture.
Besides her academic work, Sophie is passionate about literature, and is the Features Editor of Bad Form, an online and print literary review by and about black, asian, and racialised community writers. She is very interested in interdisciplinary and collaborative work, and in the circulation of knowledge outside of academia.
