Vincent Brown is the Charles Warren Professor of History and Professor of African and African-American Studies, and the director of the History Design Studio at Harvard University. His research and creative endeavors focus on the political dimensions of cultural practice in the African Diaspora, with a particular emphasis on the early modern Atlantic world. A native of Southern California, he was educated at the University of California, San Diego, and received his PhD in History from Duke University, where he also trained in the theory and craft of multimedia.

Robin McDowell’s work explores historical dimensions of environmental racism and visions for environmental justice for Black communities. Her book project, Swamp Capitalism: The Roots of Environmental Racism, uses archives, oral histories, earth sciences, and multimedia art to tell a history of the bonds between race and environment on a geologic time scale. She holds a Ph.D. in African and African American Studies and an M.A. in History from Harvard University and an M.F.A. in Design from the University of Texas at Austin.

Stephen Hamilton is a mixed-media artist, researcher, and arts educator living and working in Boston, Massachusetts. He is currently a Ph.D. Student in the African and African American Studies Department. His research focuses on the Histories of textile production and trade in West and West Central Africa. Specifically, his work explores these early histories as indigenous African sites of knowledge and identity formation.

Aabid Allibhai is a PhD candidate in African & African American Studies and a 2022–23 fellow at the Hutchins Center. His extensive research on the lives of enslaved people in New England has been recognized by Mayor Kim Janey and profiled in the Boston Globe, The Emancipator, and the Bay State Banner. He has twice been awarded Harvard College’s Certificate of Distinction in Teaching and holds a JD from Harvard Law School.

Dr. Mandy Izadi received her Ph.D. in History from Oxford University, United Kingdom, where she focused on Transnational Indigenous Studies; African American History; Environmental Studies; Global Capitalism; Euro-American imperialism; and modern America. Dr. Izadi is currently working on her first book, Born of War: Seminoles and the Making of America (forthcoming with Yale University Press), a transnational history of the Afro-Indigenous peoples known as the Seminoles. Spanning centuries, the book extends to the present day to offer a new portrait of Indigenous America that is intricately bound to modern America. Recently, Dr. Izadi was Postdoctoral Fellow in Global History at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the W.E.B. DuBois Fellow at the Hutchins Center. Currently, Dr. Izadi holds an appointment in Native American and Indigenous Studies within the Faculty of Arts and Science's programs in History & Literature and Ethnicity, Migration, & Rights.

Hannah K. Scruggs is a Ph.D. student in the African and African American Studies Department at Harvard. She specializes in public history, and her current work examines enslaved and free Black communities in central Virginia. She previously worked at The Montpelier Foundation as a research associate. A Central Virginia native, Hannah graduated with an MA in public history from North Carolina State University and a BA in history from William & Mary. Her research and professional interests include slavery, descendant communities, and African American environmental history.

Lorenzo is a JD/PhD student studying Black radicalism and the law in the 20th century. He is interested in how Black radical movements contest notions of sovereignty and justice both in and outside of the courtroom. Additionally, Lorenzo is pursuing a secondary field in critical media practices focusing on film and public history. His media work thinks through archival practices, memory and how to ethically tell stories about Black history. Links to previous work can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/user198804926

Saffron Sener is a second-year History PhD student here at Havard. She works on environmental histories of gender and lived religion in the North American West. Her secondary interests include memory, public history, visual culture, and digital scholarship. Currently, she serves as the Graduate Curatorial Intern of American Art at the Harvard Art Museums and is a Research Assistant at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Juliana is a designer, writer and Founder of the open access library Cita Press, currently funded by a Mellon Foundation Public Knowledge Grant. She’s currently an affiliate and former Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and at metaLAB at Harvard and at Freie Universität Berlin. Juliana holds an M.F.A. in Design from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a Fulbright scholar. She’s the author of the essay collection Papel Sensible.