Ama Josephine Budge is a speculative writer, artist, curator and pleasure activist whose work navigates intimate explorations of race, art, ecology and feminism. She is currently a Guest Curator with Theatre Deli and PhD candidate in Psychosocial Studies with Dr Gail Lewis at Birkbeck. Her research takes a queer, decolonial approach to challenging climate colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on inherently environmentalist pleasure practices in Ghana and Kenya.
Ama’s fiction and non-fiction has been published internationally and she is working on her first book: a speculative duology for young adults. Ama has worked with arts institutions across the UK and abroad including the ICA, Free Word, Tate, Wellcome Collection and the V&A. She has been published by Aperture, Whitechapel Gallery & MIT Press, the Feminist Review, Critical Arts Journal, Afropunk, The Independent Newspaper, Dispatch Feminist Moving Image, Media Diversified, Skin Deep, Consented, CHEW Magazine, B. Dewitt Gallery and Autograph ABP, and commissioned to respond to the work of artists Travis Alabanza, Zanele Muholi, Gray Wielebinski, BBZ Alternative Graduate Show and Alberta Whittle.
Ama has a background in performance art with a BA in Contemporary Performance Practice from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland then took a U-turn with an MA in Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy from Goldsmiths University working on a thesis exploring Queer Modes of Encounter with Climate Colonialism and Black speculative art practices, which went on to inform her PhD and interdisciplinary praxis.
In 2019 Ama responded to the research of Angela Chan/Worm in ‘Research Network: Speculative Climate Stories’ at Iniva, discussing speculative climate fiction from a West African perspective.