Assistant Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies
Nessette Falu (pronouns she/her/hers) is a Black queer feminist anthropologist and assistant professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her book, entitled Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth Making in Brazil (2023), argues that Black lesbians enforce wellbeing against intersectional intimate violence in gynecology, leading them to evaluate, protect, and chart their sense of worth within these spaces and draw upon their daily sense of worth making. She authors peer-reviewed publications in Journal of Latin America and Caribbean Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, and Feminist Anthropology journals.
Her research lab, Gxnecologx Justice Lab, designs evidence-based multi-media resources and visual materials for community engagement about Black queer reproductive health and justice. Her current project examines through a Black feminist lens the extensive sexual abuse by gynecologists in the U.S. It interrogates sexual violence within a broader culture of abuse of institutional power that undermines racial and gendered vulnerabilities of patients. She enjoyed a seventeen-year clinical career as a Physician Assistant in neurosurgery, internal medicine, HIV-specialty, hematology-oncology, and pain management.