About Dr Kũi Mackay
Digital sociologist, cultural critic & facilitator
Lived Experience
A life shaped by Black feminism
Born in the United States and raised in London by Kenyan parents, I have known what it means to be seen as an outsider, including in places I understood as home. These experiences shaped my commitment to challenging the structures that decide who belongs and who is free to live without having to justify their presence.
Black feminism is how I live my life, because it centres the interconnectedness of our freedom and the solidarity needed to achieve it. It shapes the questions I ask, the people I work with and how I work with them. It also shapes how I understand the digital. The ubiquity of digital spaces and technologies has blurred any distinction between online and offline, while creating yet another site of structural and systemic oppression.
PROFESSIONAL Experience
Four interconnected strands
For more than twenty years, my work has spanned academia, the community sector, government and business, in the UK, across Africa and beyond. I think of that work as four interconnected strands: research, concept and framework building, writing, and speaking. Digital Blackness is where these strands come together, bringing (nearly) everything I do into one space.
Research
I specialise in participatory mixed-methods research and am commissioned by organisations across sectors to explore themes such as race, gender and technology, institutional culture and belonging.
Concepts
Where existing language and tools fall short in naming and responding to structural harms, I develop new concepts and frameworks to understand and change what stands in the way of our collective liberation.
Writing
Writing is how I think ideas through. Alongside journal articles and reports, I write essays that respond to current events, culture and my own experiences, bringing Black feminist analysis into conversation with a range of audiences.
Speaking
I am regularly invited by universities, public bodies and community organisations in the UK and internationally to speak on digital Black joy, anti-racism strategy and how Black women survive and thrive in institutions.
Educational Experience
An interdisciplinary education
My work and lived experience are supported by a PhD in Human Geography from Royal Holloway, University of London, which explored Kenyan diasporic identities across online and offline spaces, as well as an MSc in Sustainable Development and a Law degree (LLB Hons).
Each discipline has shaped how I think and work. Law introduced me to critical race theory and to questions of personhood. My MSc, where I specialised in information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), deepened my understanding of the relationship between technology, power and inequality. Human geography gave me ways to understand how identities are shaped by the spaces we move through, both online and offline.
Location
Where to find me
While most of my work happens remotely and online, I live in Liverpool, a city in North West England that is home to one of the longest-established Black communities in Europe. However, I will always be a South London girl.
When I am not working on Digital Blackness, you can find me at BRK Ujima, a Black feminist-led organisation I co-founded with two other Black women. Guided by the spirit of Ujima, we work to dismantle systems of inequality and oppression. As Director of Research and Development, I lead research, consultancy and facilitation that move organisations from understanding inequality to addressing it.
