Dr. Michael Sawyer
Michael Sawyer is Associate Professor of African American Literature & Culture in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh where he also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies. He was recently appointed the Director of the Graduate Program for Cultural Studies and is an Electus Faculty Fellow in the David C. Fredericks Honors College and a faculty affiliate in Africana Studies. He has published four monographs, An Africana Philosophy of Temporality: Homo Liminalis (Palgrave:2018) and Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X (Pluto: 2020), The Door of No Return: Being-As-Black (Temple University Press: 2025) and a trade biography of Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton entitled Sir Lewis (Legacy Lit/Grand Central Press: 2025). Michael is a resident fellow at ONX Studies (NYC and Athens, Greece) where he works on immersive art installations that expand the vocabulary of Black Radical Thought. He is the co-editor of The Journal of French and Francophone Studies, a member of the PMLA Advisory Committee and the editorial boards of Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon and Critical Times.

He holds a B.S. from the United States Naval Academy, an M.A. from the University of Chicago’s Committee on International Relations, and a Masters in Comparative Literature and PhD in Africana Studies from Brown University.

Dr. Justin Hosbey
Dr. Justin Hosbey is a humanistic social scientist and Black studies scholar. He is Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. His ethnographic work explores Black social and cultural life in the U.S. Gulf Coast and Mississippi Delta regions. He focuses on the ways that southern Black communities articulate modes of citizenship that demand the interruption of racial capitalism and ecocide. His forthcoming book project utilizes research methods from the digital and spatial humanities to understand and visualize how the post-Katrina privatization of neighborhood schools in low-income and working-class Black communities has fractured, but not broken, space and placemaking in Black New Orleans. His published work can be found in Southern Cultures, Environment and Society, and Environment and Planning F.

Dr. J. T. Roane
J.T. Roane is assistant professor of Africana Studies and Geography and Andrew W. Mellon chair in Global Racial Justice in the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and he is a 2008 graduate of the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia. His award-winning book Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place was published in 2023 with New York University Press. Roane’s short experimental film Plot received support from Princeton’s Crossroads Fellowship. He also currently serves as a member of Just Harvest—Tidewater, an Indigenous and Black led organization building toward food sovereignty and justice in Virginia’s historical plantation region through political and practical education.

Dr. Teona Williams
Teona Williams is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography. Her work revolves around Black Geographies, 20th century African American and environmental history, and Black feminist theory. Her current work explores the role of disaster and hunger, in shaping Black feminist ecologies from 1930-1990s. Specifically, she follows a cadre of rural Black feminists who articulated visions of food sovereignty, overhauled antiblack disaster relief, and vigorously fought for universal basic income, radical land reform, and food and clean water access as a human right. Prior to Rutgers, she received her doctoral degree at Yale University in the departments of African American Studies and History. She also completed a master’s degree in environmental justice at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. In 2017, she won the Clyde Woods Prize for best graduate paper in Black Geographies, for her paper “Build A Wall Around Hyde Park:” Race, Space and Policing on the Southside of Chicago 1950-2010, published by The Antipode in March 2020. She is the author of the essay “Islands of Freedom: The struggle to desegregate Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountain National Park 1936-1941” in the forthcoming edited collection Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, Environmental History which will be released in 2024.

Saniya Cheatom
Saniya Cheatom is a sophomore from Baltimore, Maryland with a deep passion for friends, family and community. She has a keen interest in Black women’s history. Her research focuses on how a Black woman’s identity is constructed across geographies and time with the concentration of hair.

Margaret Cronin
Peg Cronin is a Writing & Teaching Consultant in the Bucknell University Writing Center and serves on the Griot Advisory Board.  She has an M.A. in Critical & Creative Thinking from UMass Boston, where she focused on feminist of color theorists.

Athaliah Elvis
Athaliah Elvis is a third-year student pursuing a dual-major in Creative Writing and Political Science alongside a minor in Critical Black Studies. Athaliah is also an intern at Bucknell’s Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Culture, where she is currently researching African Girlhoods. Alongside this, Athaliah is a Student Media Relations Intern for Bucknell’s Division of Marketing and Communications, a Copy Editor for the student-run newspaper, The Bucknellian, a contributing writer for Bucknell’s Chapter of Her Campus and an Undergraduate Humanities Research Assistant. Her research interests are African American Literature, Black womanhood, and American History.

C. Cymone Fourshey
Dr. Catherine Cymone Fourshey is Professor of History and International Relations and Director of the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures at Bucknell University. Fourshey’s published research focuses on human projects developing agriculture, constructing hospitality, and embarking on migration as they intersect with constructs of environment, economy, and politics in precolonial Tanzania. She is currently working on collaborative projects related to childhood and family in precolonial East Africa. Fourshey has researched and published on Gender in Africa both in precolonial and colonial spaces. She has conducted field research in Southwestern Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zambia as well as archival work in Tanzania, Zambia, England, Germany, and The Gambia. Additionally, Fourshey has been reconstructing pieces of the history of immigrants and refugees from eastern Africa known in international aid and development circles as “Bantu Somali.” Several funding sources have supported Fourshey’s research. These include NEH, Fulbright, AAUW, Bucknell University, University of Notre Dame, Susquehanna University, and University of California at Los Angeles.

Terri Norton
Dr. Terri Norton is the Associate Dean for Students and Strategic Initiatives and Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Bucknell University, College of Engineering. She also serves as the Executive Director for the Engineering Success Alliance. Before Bucknell, she was a professor and construction engineering program coordinator at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and a member of the technical staff within the Structural Dynamics Department at The Aerospace Corporation. Dr. Norton’s technical expertise is in the area of structural dynamics and structural vulnerability. Her research interests involve evaluating the effects of hazards on civil structures, debris management, and disaster reconstruction. She served as a Fulbright Research Scholar in Japan for her research on debris management and reconstruction following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (GEJET). Dr. Norton has served as the principal investigator (PI) on grants funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Nebraska Department of Roads (NDOR), and the Department of Energy (DOE). She was an invited member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Resilient America Roundtable.

Meenakshi Ponnuswami
Meenakshi Ponnuswami is Associate Professor of English and Affiliated Faculty in Critical Black Studies and Theatre & Dance at Bucknell. Specializing in Modern Drama and Ethnic Comedy, Professor Ponnuswami teaches courses on modern drama and social justice, American masculinity in performance, African American theatre of the 1950s and 60s, and American ethnic comedy. Professor Ponnuswami’s scholarship focuses on postwar British and American theatre, most recently on black British and British Asian playwrights, race and comedy, and the theatre of the Civil Rights and Black Power era. She is completing a chapter on “Alice Childress (1916-1994)” for The Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism and recently published “Blackface in the Comedy Class.” in Teaching Comedy. Ed. Bev Hougue. New York: Modern Languages Association, 2023: 38-45.

Jaye Austin Williams
Jaye Austin Williams achieved a Ph.D., in a joint doctoral program in Drama and Theatre, University of California Irvine and San Diego and an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Professor Williams is a scholar, director, playwright, actor, teacher, writer and consultant whose work has appeared on and off Broadway and regionally over the past thirty years. A specialist in the melding of drama theory, cinema and performance with Critical Black Studies, Professor Williams travels internationally and around the U.S. lecturing and teaching interdisciplinary seminars on the analysis of structural racism(s) — in particular, antiblackness — and their myriad performances, both subtle and overt, in modernity. Her current research focuses on these performed antagonisms as they are represented and/or perpetrated in and by cinema and drama. As a scholar-artist, Professor Williams’ applied practice in academia has been through directing works that ground students’ discovery of Black drama and performance as portals into not only the psychological underpinnings of characters’ circumstances and the gesture of uplift that might be prompted by them, but also, the systemic and ongoing violence that impacts Black existence on a global scale. Williams’s intellectual work focuses on structural analyses of Black existence as a predicament for continuing thought around the largely unattended question: why do Black people suffer? Her forthcoming monograph, Staging (Within) Antiblack Violence: Toward a Radical Black Dramaturgy, examines this new emphasis and its implications in detail.

Oluwafunmilayo Akinpelu
Oluwafunmilayo Akinpelu (Funmi Omo Moji) is a doctoral candidate of English Literature at the University of Alabama, a writer and collaborative interactive arts enthusiast with a self-published novel titled Half Lives. She earned her master’s degree in Comparative (Literary) History at Central European University, and she obtained a BA in Literature-in-English from Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. Her research interests include African writing, Nigerian contemporary literary history, futurisms, and feminisms, digital storytelling (especially transmedia and interactive storytelling), as well as pop(ular) cultures of Africa and East Asia.

Shaheryar Asghar
Shaheryar Asghar is a first-year student at Bucknell University majoring in Psychology, Economics, and Creative Writing. Born and raised in Pakistan, Shaheryar’s work explores the intersections of identity, storytelling, and community-building in postcolonial contexts. With a background in theatre, creative writing, and activism, they are committed to fostering narratives that empower marginalized voices and envision more inclusive futures.

Benjamin Barson
Benjamin Barson is a composer, historian, and musicologist. He is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His book Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons (Wesleyan University Press, 2024) thinks through jazz as an Afro-Atlantic art form deeply tied to the counter-plantation legacies of the Haitian Revolution and their echoes in Radical Reconstruction. He received his PhD in Music from the University of Pittsburgh and recently completed a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell University and a Fulbright Garcia-Robles postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California in Mexicali, Mexico. Barson’s research rethinks migration, agency, and cultural resistance, and has published on topics ranging from the musical cultures of Chinese indenture in the late nineteenth century United States South (The Cargo Rebellion, PM Press, 2023) to the legacy of Haitian migrants in early Louisianan blues (in The Routledge Handbook to Jazz and Gender, 2022).

Winnifred Brown-Glaude
Winnifred Brown Glaude is a Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at The College of New Jersey. Her work focuses on race, gender and Caribbean economies. Her forthcoming book, Neoliberalism in a Small Place: The Case of Jamaica will be published next year by the University of Michigan Press.

Karmella Haynes
Karmella Haynes is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University. She earned her Ph.D. studying epigenetics and chromatin in Drosophila at Washington University, St. Louis. Postdoctoral fellowships at Davidson College and Harvard Medical School introduced her to synthetic biology. Her Davidson HHMI postdoc fellowship project on bacterial computers was recognized as “Publication of the Year” in 2008 by the Journal of Biological Engineering. Today, her research aims to apply the intrinsic properties of chromatin, the DNA-protein structure that packages eukaryotic genes, to engineer proteins and nucleic acids that control cell development. After Dr. Haynes joined the faculty at the Emory School of Medicine in 2019, she received an NIH R21 grant (2019) to develop new protein engineering and computational tools for cancer epigenetics, and launched the annual NSF-funded AfroBiotech conference series (2019). She is a founder and instructor of the Cold Spring Harbor Summer Course on Synthetic Biology (2013 – present), a member of the national Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC, 2014 – present), past advisor and current Judge Emeritus for the annual International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition (2007 – present), and a member of the NIH National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity (2021). She was named one of 1000 Inspiring Black Scientists by Cell Mentor (Cell Press 2020), was a featured guest on PBS NOVA (2020) and PRI’s Science Friday (2016), was profiled in Forbes magazine (2020), received Color Magazine’s Women of Color: Innovator in STEM award (2021), and was elected into the 2023 American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

Mercy Ifiegbu
Mercy Ifiegbu is an international transfer computer science student and Griot Institute Intern. She also works as a Resident Assistant and an Informational Security Assistant, and enjoys African American and African diasporan history.

Marla Jaksch
Marla L. Jaksch is a Professor and chair of Women’s Gender, & Sexuality Studies at The College of New Jersey. Jaksch is a scholar, artist, and activist who specializes in transnational feminist and queer studies with focus on neo/colonialism, development, and digital cultures; girlhood studies; and arts-based & decolonial research methods. She is the Lead Co- PI on a Mellon Foundation Grant Undocumented. Black. Citizen., a collaborative multi-disciplinary project that aims to co-create teaching resources about citizenship, belonging, migration, and Blackness centering the experiences of Black undocumented immigrants in and beyond Trenton, New Jersey.

Alisha Lola Jones
Dr. Alisha Lola Jones is an associate professor of music in contemporary societies and director of research in the faculty of music at the University of Cambridge in England. She is also the co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies (JPMS), alongside Dr Benjamin Tausig of SUNY- Stony Brook University. Dr. Jones’ book Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (Oxford University Press) breaks ground by analyzing the role of gospel music-making in constructing and renegotiating gender identity among Black men. She is completing three books: a gastromusicology book entitled Ultrasonic Tastemakers: Towards a Critical Gastromusicology, Sound Our Signatures: A Womanist Approach to Music Research, which sets forth anti-oppressive ways of listening to Black women, and The Black Messiah: Listening for Deliverance.

Ree Joseph
Ree Joseph is a Cultural Communications Specialist, DEI Consultant, and Higher Ed Student Support Advocate with a passion for using social media, music, and art to drive cultural impact. Holding a B.A. in Black Studies and an M.A. in African and African Diaspora Studies, she specializes in fostering inclusive spaces and promoting equity. Ree has held leadership roles in museums, nonprofits, and higher education, including Associate Director of Gender & Sexuality Resources, Women’s Resources at Bucknell University. As an Advisory Board member for The Leadership Institute for Compassionate Changemaking, she continues to champion transformative justice, diversity, and intersectional advocacy.

Holiness Kerandi
Holiness Kerandi is a junior Computer Science and Engineering Student from Nairobi. Her main interests lie in the intersectionality of data, technology and society.

alma khasawnih
alma khasawnih is an associate professor in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at The College of New Jersey. Her work focuses on urgent ephemera (a term she coined) during moments of political unrest and revolution. Her current monograph project focuses on the urgent ephemera of the 25 January Egyptian Revolution that began in 2011.

Eddy Lopez
Eddy A. Lopez is Associate Professor of Art & Art History Affiliated Faculty in Latin American Studies at Bucknell University. López received an MFA in printmaking from the University of Miami, and a BFA in Painting and Printmaking as well as a BA in Art History from Florida International University. Eddy A. López, born in Matagalpa, Nicaragua in the midst of the Sandinista revolution, is an artist whose work amalgamates archives and memories of war into abstractions of vibrant colors, patterns, and shapes. López uses big data, averaging algorithms, and print media to create wide-scale collage compositions that try to find meaning in a chaotic world.

López’s work has been exhibited at the the International Print Center New York, The Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, the Janet Turner Print Museum, the North American Print Biennial, ArtMiami, ArtPalm Beach, among others. 

Jackline Masetu
Jackline Masetu is a sophomore from Nairobi, Kenya, with a deep passion for life, family, and friendships. She has a keen interest in history and its impact on technology and the modern world.

Richard Mbih
Richard Mbih is Assistant Teaching Professor of African Studies at Penn State University. A Geographer by training, Mbih’s research interests focus on natural resource governance, political ecology, environment and development in Sub-Saharan Africa. He examines environmental change and society, agro-pastoral sustainability, Fulani pastoral livelihood, environmental conflicts and alternative conflict management, climate change, community resilience, and international development. Currently, Professor Mbih is engaged in two environment, sustainability, development and livelihood security related research projects. One project examines the effects of climate change on agro-pastoral sustainability, transhumance and persistent farmer-herder conflicts between indigenous Fulani pastoral group and smallholder farming communities in the Western Highlands of Cameroon. The study examines the adaptation and resilient strategies adopted by vulnerable African communities in the face of extreme environmental challenges exacerbated by climate change in Cameroon. The other project is within the scope of a broader collaborative research on the effects of climate extremes, poverty, and political violence on human misery and migration in sub-Saharan African communities.

Rose Nyounway
Rose Nyounway is a sophomore from Monrovia, Liberia, pursuing a double major in Psychology and Education. She is a student deacon at the Rooke Chapel congregation, a member of the Aging and Personality Pathology Research Lab, the Strategic Planning Officer of the Bucknell African and Caribbean Student Association, a board member of the Alumni Association, and the student representative for the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee.

Daniela Perdomo-Chávez
Daniela Perdomo-Chávez (she/her), Dani P is a girl from San Miguel, El Salvador, born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. A first-generation college student, she is currently pursuing a BA in Latin American Studies and Spanish at Bucknell University, where she is a graduating senior and LA Posse 12 Scholar. 

Mbih Jerome Tosam
Mbih Jerome Tosam is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon.  He obtained his PhD in Philosophy from the Yaoundé I, Cameroon in 2011. His research interests are in the areas of Bioethics, Philosophy of Medicine, African Philosophy, and Intercultural Philosophy.

Barbara Wankollie
Barbara Wankollie, a member of class of 2026, is a Political science major and an Intern at the Griot Institute,  researching Antigua Sugar mills and culture. She’s also the vice president for the Alexander Hamilton Society Bucknell chapter and an E-board member of the Global Student council. 

Jaruam M Xavier
Jaruam Xavier, a Brazilian researcher and choreographer, explores hybrid dance forms, particularly the fusion of Capoeira (African-Brazilian martial-arts/dance) and the Flying Low Method, to discover new ways of acquiring dance knowledge. His goal is to decolonize dance by promoting diversity in dance education.