 Born in Ghana as Esi Reiter Sutherland, she is the eldest of the three children of playwright and cultural activist Efua Sutherland and African-American Bill Sutherland (1918–2010), a colonial civil rights activist who went to Ghana in 1953 on the recommendation of George Padmore to Kwame Nkrumah.She was educated at Achimota School (where she met her husband).She has held various positions at educational establishments in Europe and the US, including as Senior Fellow at the Institute of International Education at Manchester University, UK, and as visiting lecturer at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, USA, the Centre for African Studies, University of Birmingham, UK and L'Institut des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France.