Victor Ultra Omni
PhD Candidate
Emory University
PhD Candidate
Emory University
Victor Ultra Omni, M.A. (They/Them) is a PhD Candidate in the department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. Their dissertation The Love Ball: A History of New York City's House-Structured Ballroom Culture, 1972-1992 provides a historical treatment of the origins of ballroom culture. They use methods of oral history, participatory action research, and broader memory work to engage the pioneers of New York City's house-structured ballroom culture. In 2025, Victor Ultra Omni is the New York University's Hemispheric Institute's 2025 Scholar in Residence and the inaugural Trans Studies at the Commons Fellow at the University of Kansas. They are also the co-director of Imagining America's Publically Active Graduate Education (PAGE) fellowship through Imagining America.
Victor has shared their dissertation research at invited lectures and workshops at institutions including Pomona College, New York University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Syracuse University, the University of Kansas at Lawrence, American University, Spelman College, Kenyon College, and Oglethorpe University. Their research has won research support from the Mellon Foundation, Society for Visual Anthropology, Social Science Research Council, Institute for Citizens and Scholars, Imagining America, and the Ten:Tacles Initiative for Transgender History. Currently they are co-editing Trans Studies Quarterly issue 13.3 with Dr. Eva Pensis and ballroom-archivist-filmmaker Noelle Deleon. This marks the first academic journal issue dedicated to house/ball culture and has contributors from across the globe.
As a teacher and student at Emory University they have received awards and fellowships from the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, the Candler School of Theology, Center for Faculty Excellence, Center for Race & Ethnicity, Studies in Sexuality, the Piedmont Sustainability Project, the Initiative for Global Studies, and Laney Graduate School's Teaching Assistant Training Opportunity Fellow. In 2022, they co-founded Emory University's Black Feminist Working Group that brings together graduate students, staff, and faculty across the college to incubate Black feminist scholarship. Their writing is published or forthcoming in the Journal of Feminist Australian Studies, Trans Studies Quarterly (TSQ), the African American Intellectual Historical Society, The Black Scholar, and the textbook Feminist Studies: Foundations, Conversations, and Applications among other publications. One of their recent pieces written with ther mentor Dr. Laura Alexandra Harris can be read in the 10th anniversary issue of Trans Studies Quarterly 10 (3-4), "Who Is They?: Black Queer/Trans Vernacular Grammars."
Beyond academic appointments, Victor is a trans masculine Afro-Latine memory worker, teacher, and writer. Since 2017, they have been a proud father in the iconic worldwide pioneering House of Ultra Omni. Beyond their academic work, Victor is member of the Black Memory Workers Collective, Southern Memory Workers, and Invisible Histories Project. They are currently a community advisor to the Museum of the City of New York's exhibition ¡Urban Stomp! which opened in the spring of 2025. Additionally they are now on the board of advisors for Listening for Liberation: Radical Oral history and Trans Story Telling, an intensive year of study, mentorship, and collective practice led by Jeanne Vaccaro. Victor is invested in building partnerships that preserve the legacies of Black and brown queer and/or trans people.
With a strong commitment to popular education and the transformative potential of research, they welcome opportunities for speaking engagements, consulting, curatorial work, policy reports, and post-doctoral positions. Their expertise in the history of ballroom culture, oral history, and Black trans studies has led to consistent work as a speaker and consultant where they had given lectures and workshops at non-profits and academic institutions. You can see a selection of their public scholarship under "interviews and media".They are eager to contribute to new projects and collaborations that align with their research interests and advocacy work.