Akasemi Newsome

Dr. Akasemi Newsome is the Associate Director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies. At the Institute, she is also Executive Director of the Center for German and European Studies, Executive Director of the Peder Sather Center for Advanced Study, Co-Director of the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence in European Union Studies and Founding Executive Director of the Center of Excellence for French and Francophone Studies. She is also Associate Director at UC Berkeley’s Global, International and Area Studies research hub.

Akasemi Newsome’s research interests include global race, ethnicity and immigration, labor and social movements, comparative capitalisms, the politics of EU crises, transatlantic relations, as well as European colonialism in the global setting. Among her publications are a Special Issue on Changing EU-US Relations in Politics and Governance (2022);  The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises (2021) ; Special Issue on  Cooperation, Conflict and Interaction in the Global Commons in International Relations (2021); and Special issue on  Transatlantic relations in times of uncertainty: crises and EU-US relations in Journal of European Integration (2018). She is currently writing a book manuscript on race and comparative labor mobilization titled, The Color of Solidarity.

Newsome has organized, moderated and presented at 500+ research workshops, colloquia, seminars, conferences and other events around the world and speaks regularly on her research interests. She has also spearheaded public programming series elevating research on and by Global Studies and European Studies scholars and activists from racialized minority groups, not least via research network partnerships with KU Leuven (Belgium)  University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) Kobe University (Japan), São Paulo State University (Brazil), Seoul National University (South Korea), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (India). At UC Berkeley, Newsome has secured multiple six- and seven-figure grants and gifts from various funders, including the EU Commission, the US Department of Education, and the MGS Foundation.

Professionally, she is a board member of; the Advisory Council for the Center for International Affairs and World Cultures (2023-), the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2022-), and the University of California Berkeley Graduate Division Vice Provost’s Advisory Board (2020-). She is a founding member of the Women of Color in Comparative Politics group, and associate member of the European Union Studies Association, National Resource Centers group, the Jean Monnet Centers of Excellence Network (North America), DAAD sponsored Centers of Excellence Network, the University of California Black Administrators Conference and the University of California Berkeley Black Staff and Faculty Organization.

Newsome has a B.A. in History from Columbia University in the City of New York, an M.A. in Political Science and Transatlantic Relations from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to her career in higher education, Newsome gained experience in communications, strategic planning and political outreach in Fortune 500 companies, major US foundations, and international policy think tanks. She speaks German, has studied French, Danish, Portuguese and Hausa and has lived in Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Nigeria.