About Cresa Pugh

Currently I am a PhD candidate in sociology and social policy at Harvard University and starting in Fall 2022 I’ll be an assistant professor of sociology at the New School (NYC). My research examines postcolonial debates about the restitution of material culture looted from Africa that is now held in Western museums. My broad interests include history, postcolonial theory, sociology, material culture, and museum studies, and I am specifically interested in the British Empire having conducted research in the UK, Nigeria and Myanmar. In 2017 and 2021 I taught a course in a Massachusetts state prison on autobiography and race, and have, in recent years, become more interested in the genre of biography. My dream is to one day write a biography on Ethiopian jazz musician and cultural icon Hailu Mergia.