He is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Consortium of Humanities Centers. His fields of expertise are critical theory and political anthropology, and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Southern Africa and South America. He has been a visiting professor in Paris (Philosophy, Paris 8), Johannesburg (Wits University), Bologna, and Buenos Aires. Obarrio is the author of The Spirit of the Laws in Mozambique (2014, Univ of Chicago Press); Corps Étranger (2014 Belin Editions, Paris); A Matter of Time: The State of Things in Southern Africa (forthcoming, Duke University Press) and co-editor of African Futures: essays on crisis, emergence, possibility (2016, Univ of Chicago Press).