Faculty

Profile

Please see my personal website for more about me and my work https://romyoppermanphilosophy.cargo.site/

My research bridges Africana, continental, decolonial, environmental, and feminist philosophy to foreground issues of racism and colonialism for environmental ethics and justice. Specifically, my work is oriented by eco-philosophies that trouble theories of justice inherited from liberal political philosophy, and by ontological politics and practices of freedom operative in racial ecologies, place-based movements, and struggles over land. My research also contributes to continental philosophy and critical theory by examining how Africana and decolonial philosophy repurpose aspects of the former traditions for their own ends.

I understand philosophy as the practice of asking questions that we rarely get to ask either in everyday life or in other disciplines. It enables us to critically reflect on common sense and features of our world that present themselves as necessary and natural. For me, philosophy is a way of challenging hierarchy, domination and socio-ecological destruction, since it allows us to fundamentally question the conditions of the present, and to imagine alternative futures. As a teacher, I aim to empower students by helping them to cultivate the capacity to question themselves and their world; to think, read and write rigorously and critically; and to reflect on what a good life and society might mean.

Degrees Held

PhD 2020, The Pennsylvania State University

MPhil 2013, University of Cambridge

BA 2012, University of Warwick

Recent Publications

I am working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Groundings: Black Ecologies of Freedom. The book develops the concepts of racist environments and ecological freedom and asks how established topics within environmental and climate justice are transformed when considered from the radical philosophical traditions of the Black diaspora. 

"Charles Mills’s “Black Trash”: Reproducing Race, Pig Waste, and Ecological Resistance," Critical Philosophy of Race, 2024 

"Repairing the World: Romy Opperman interviews Esther Stanford-Xosei," OPP (Oxford Public Philosophy) 2024 

“Sylvia Wynter’s Caribbean Critical Theory” –  in Creolizing Critical Theory: New Voices in Caribbean Philosophy 2024  

"Anti-Nuclear Anti-Colonial Feminism," Blog of the APA (American Philosophical Association), November 1st 2023 

"Decolonial ecologies" Malcom Ferdinand with Romy Opperman in What Matters Most: Conversations on the Art of Living, edited by Anthony Morgan, Agenda Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2023 

"The Need for a Black Feminist Climate Justice: A Case of Haunting Ecology and Eco-Deconstruction" CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 22, Number 1, Spring 2022, pp. 59-93 (Article) 

"Racism" in "The New Basics: The Planet," The Philosopher, 2022

Interview for Research Matters 2021

Haunting and Hosting - Gender and its Discontents 2020

We Need Histories of Radical Black Ecology Now - Black Perspectives 2020 

“A Permanent Struggle Against an Omnipresent Death: Revisiting Environmental Racism with Frantz Fanon,” Critical Philosophy of Race, Volume 7, Issue 1, 2019, pp.57-80 2016.

“'Born in Flames' and the No Future of Afrofuturism,” Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal, 2016 

Research Interests

Africana Philosophy, Black Studies, Black Feminist Philosophy, climate migration, climate justice, Continental Philosophy, Decolonial Philosophy, environmental justice, Environmental Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Indigenous Philosophy and Native Studies, Postcolonial thought, Social and Political Philosophy

Awards And Honors

Fellow, Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence (2021-3)