Robert Trent Vinson is the Commonwealth Professor of African American & African Studies, Director & Chair of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies at the University of Virginia, and a Research Associate at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He is a scholar and teacher of 19th and 20th century African & African Diaspora history, specializing in the transnational connections between southern Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.
Deborah E. McDowell was Director of the Woodson Institute from 2008-2021, serving the longest term as director in the Institute’s 40-plus year history. During this period of significant growth, the African American and African Studies program became a department, expanded its curriculum and faculty roster, established a Study-Abroad program in Ghana, a certificate in Africana Studies, and secured the endowment of the fellowship program.
Robin R. Means Coleman, PhD is a Professor of Media Studies and of African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. She is Director of the Black Fantastic Media Research Lab. An accomplished, prizewinning administrator, she has held several senior leadership positions. Before joining the University of Virginia, Dr. Coleman was the Vice President & Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, and the Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand Barnett Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University.
A scholar specializing in African American, African Diaspora, and African history, Nemata Blyden is the author of African Americans and Africa: A New History (Yale University Press, 2019), and West Indians in West Africa, 1808-1880: The Diaspora in Reverse (University of Rochester Press, 2000), among other publications. Her teaching and scholarship center the experiences of African descended people, thinking about this history in insightful ways by looking at their history through an often-neglected lens of “Global Black” history. Her principal thematic interests have in
Professor Ogunnaike is a scholar of African and Afro-diasporic religious traditions, primarily in Brazil and Nigeria, with a keen interest in the ways each region has influenced the practice of religion in the other. He studied Ifa divination with high priest Ifarinwale Ogundiran in Modakeke, Nigeria, and while his main areas of research are Brazilian Candomblé and oriṣa worship in Nigeria, he also studies Islam and Christianity on the continent and in diaspora as well as other Afro-diasporic traditions.
Fatima Siwaju is a cultural anthropologist whose research centers on Islam in the Americas, citizenship and the politics of belonging, and Africana intellectual traditions. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, which explores the nexus of race, religion, and citizenship as they pertain to the spiritual and sociopolitical trajectories of Afro-descendant Muslims in the Colombian Pacific.
Alexandria Smith (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality in the Department of African American and African Studies. She works in the areas of Black feminist and queer literature and theory, writing and thinking about the roles of embodiment in life writing and theory, the ways that Blackness interacts with and disrupts conceptions of gender and sexuality, and how gendered discourses are constructed in Black cultural work.
Leonora Anyango, PhD, is a language, culture, and education expert of international repute. She is an applied linguist and specializes in the teaching and writing of languages, including but not limited to Kiswahili, English as an International Language, and Japanese. She has also taught College Composition, Creative Writing and Multicultural Education. She is an avid curriculum developer and has worked in this capacity as a consultant for reputable institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Nasrin Olla is an Assistant Professor of English and African & African American Studies. Nasrin completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town and her PhD in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University. Nasrin is currently completing her first book project, The Right to Opacity, which engages with the theme of alterity across a range of contemporary African and African diasporic literature.
Ashleigh Greene Wade is Assistant Professor of Digital Studies, jointly appointed in Media Studies and African American Studies. Broadly speaking, her work traverses the fields of Black girlhood studies, digital and visual media studies, Black Feminist theory, and digital humanities. Wade has a Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University and is an alumna of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies Fellowship Program.
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