I am an anthropologist whose work focuses on the cultural politics of profit, ethnonationalism, and social mobilization. My first book (in progress) traces the extensive commercial migration of Nigerian businessmen across the Middle East and Asia. Based on ethnographic and archival fieldwork, the project examines how these transnational circuits are transforming social and economic life in Nigeria, with a focus on market formation, kinship and gender, race and ethnicity, and postcolonial economic sovereignty.
Two future projects include 1.) Nigeria's continental presence and relation to south-south geopolitical and economic formations such as BRICS and 2.) the meanings and politics of “local business” and community in the Rocky Mountain Front Range of the contemporary American West.
At Rice, I am a faculty affiliate of the Center for African & African American Studies. Prior to Rice, I was an assistant professor of anthropology at Fordham University, an African Studies postdoctoral associate at Yale University, and a visiting Ph.D. student at the University of Lagos (Nigeria). My research has been supported by sources such as the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. I am currently program co-chair for the Association for Africanist Anthropology, and I am most regularly involved with the Lagos Studies Association. Please visit here for access to paywalled articles.
COURSES
Anthropology of Capitalism
What is the Global South?
Nationalism and Beyond
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology Theory
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Articles
2026. The Global Majority? Political qualities of capital between two Afro-Asian demographic giants, Conclusion of Special Series: "New Directions in Africa-China Studies," Critical Asian Studies
2026. Huang, Mingwei and Vivian Chenxue Lu. The orienting work of ‘culture’ and Africa-China as method, African Studies Review
2024. The Body Geopolitic: Afro-Asian pluralities and playful masculinities in Nigerian popular culture, The Black Scholar
2022. Emplacing capital: Securing commerce and citizenship in the Nigerian megacity, American Ethnologist
2022. Mobilizing home: Diasporic agitations in the global remakings of postwar southeastern Nigeria, African Studies Review
2018. Huang, Mingwei, V.C. Lu, Susan MacDougall, & Megan Steffan, Disciplinary Violence, Anthropology News
2017. Agitating the State: Biafran Money, Memes, and Mobility, The Republic: Journal of Nigerian Affairs
2017. Biafra—Nostalgia as Critique, Africa is a Country
Select reviews and other writing
2025. Book Note on Southern Mountain Music: The Collected Writings of Wayne Erbsen, The Journal of Southern History
2025. This is Not a Liberal Reclamation: Violence and the making of rebel kin, Medical Anthropology Quarterly
2025. Osei-Opare, Nana and V. C. Lu. Elon Musk wanted the Cybertruck to look like the future. But it reminds us of a particular past, Slate Magazine
2025. Ayers, Brooke, Madeline Brown, V. C. Lu. Examining Cultural, Historical, and Ecological Themes in Trail Names in Maryland, USA, Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture
2025. The Nigerian Rise of Diaspora Citizen Media, Journal of African Media Studies
2024. Review of Uneasy Embrace: Africa, India, and the Spectre of Race, Journal of African and Asian Studies
2023. Introduction of Book Forum on Terror Capitalism, Antipode
2022. Ordering law and life in a besieged African state, Cultural Dynamics
2022. Review of Unmaking Migrants: Nigeria’s Campaign to End Human Trafficking, Political and Legal Anthropology Review
2020. Pirates, Insurers, Traders, Diviners: Encountering Economies of Somali Piracy, Anthropology Book Forum
2020. The Afterghosts of Protest, Africa is a Country
2019. The Nigerian Electric Story, Africa is a Country