“Tell stories filled with facts. Make people touch and taste and KNOW. Make people FEEL FEEL FEEL.”
Hello! I’m Dr. Anuli Akanegbu, a cultural anthropologist and founder of BLK IRLⓇ. My work is concerned with how Black people in the U.S. South are building lives, creating stability, and imagining futures amid economic uncertainty. Through research, cultural production, and public scholarship, I document and share the knowledge, creativity, and everyday strategies our communities use to navigate a rapidly changing world. My goal is to build shared knowledge about work, technology, and economic life in Black communities in ways that strengthen community capacity, cultivate curiosity and lifelong learning, and support Black self-determination, imagination, and joy.
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Anuli Akanegbu, PhD, (pronounced Ah-noo-lee A-ka-nay-boo), is a cultural anthropologist based in Atlanta who studies how Black workers in creative, cultural, and gig economies build livelihoods amid economic insecurity and shifting labor markets in the U.S. South.
She is the founder of BLK IRLⓇ, a public-engaged research and cultural production practice that brings people together through conversations, workshops, and public programs to reflect on how work, technology, and economic change shape how we live, create, relate, and dream.
Guided by Octavia Butler’s directive to “tell stories filled with facts,” Anuli draws on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research to understand how labor, policy, technology, and urban life shape how people work and survive. She earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from New York University and holds a B.A. in Communications and Culture from Howard University.
Anuli’s work spans research, writing, and public scholarship across academic, media, cultural, and public interest spaces. Most recently, she was a researcher on the Labor Futures team at the Data & Society Research Institute, where she led projects that explored the intersections of labor, race, and technology. Her sole-author study, (404) Job Not Found: What Workforce Training Can’t Fix for Black Atlantans in the Age of AI was published by the organization in February 2026.
