Emma Dabiri

Emma Dabiri is an Irish author, academic, and broadcaster. Her debut book, Don't Touch My Hair, was published in 2019.

Dabiri was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Nigerian Yoruba father. After spending her early years in Atlanta, Georgia, her family returned to Dublin when Dabiri was five years of age. She says that her experience of growing up isolated and as the target of frequent racism informed her perspective (2019). After school she moved to London to study African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, her academic career leading to broadcast work, including co-presenting BBC Four's Britain's Lost Masterpieces, Channel 4 documentaries such as Is Love Racist?, and a radio show about Afrofuturism, among others.

Dabiri is a frequent contributor to print and online media, including The Guardian, Irish Times, Dublin Inquirer, Vice, and others. She has also published in academic journals. Dabiri's outspokenness on issues of race and racism has caused her to have to deal with extreme "trollism" and racist abuse online. She says of this that "it's just words" and the racism she grew up with fortified her to deal with it. She is the author of two books: Don't Touch My Hair (2019) and What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition (2021).

In her 2019 book Don't Touch My Hair, Dabiri combines memoir with social commentary and philosophy. She moves beyond the personal to examine African hair in wider contexts, with the book travelling across geographical space and through time to take in pre-colonial Africa up to modern day Western society. Throughout she writes that African hair represents a complex visual language. The review by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff in The Guardian summed up Don't Touch My Hair by saying: "The first title of its kind, with fresh ideas and a vivid sense of purpose, Dabiri's book is groundbreaking."