Program Faculty

Professor of English and Africana Studies; Graduate Program Director

Professor Aljoe’s research focuses on 18th and early 19th Century Black Atlantic and Caribbean literature with a specialization on the slave narrative and early novels. In addition to teaching in these areas, she has published articles on these…

Dean’s Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies

Kabria Baumgartner is an award-winning historian of early United States history, specializing in African American women’s and gender history, public history, and the history of education. She is the author of In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and …

Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology & Africana Studies

Layla D. Brown is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology & Africana Studies and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Brown’s research focuses on Pan-African, Socialist, and Feminist social movements in Venezue…

Assistant Professor of Religion and Africana Studies

N. Fadeke Castor (she/they) is a Black Feminist ethnographer and African diaspora studies scholar, with research and teaching interests in religion, race, performance and the intersectional politics of decolonization. As a Yorùbá Ifá initiate of Trin…

Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Cultures, Societies and Global Studies

Dr. Patrice Collins earned her PhD in Sociology from Yale University in 2022. Her research is situated at the intersection of urban sociology, race and ethnicity, social justice, parental incarceration, and child wellbeing. …

Associate Professor

Caleb Gayle is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism with a joint appointment in the Department of Department of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies (Africana Studies – CSSH). He’s also the Associate Director of Northeastern’s C…

Director of Africana Studies, Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice, and Professor of Africana Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Régine Michelle Jean-Charles is a Black feminist literary scholar and cultural critic who works at the intersection of race, gender, and justice. Her scholarship and teaching in Africana Studies include expertise on Black France, Sub-Saharan Africa, …

Stearns Trustee Professor of History and Global Studies

Kris Manjapra works at the intersection of global history and the critical study of race and colonialism. His research connects the Caribbean and Indian Ocean worlds. His books include a comparative study of global emancipation processes and the impl…

Assistant Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies

Anjanette Chan Tack’s research interests include race/ethnicity, gender, immigration, urban sociology, health, and spatial analytics. Her research has won numerous national awards and has been supported by fellowships from the MacArthur Foundat…

Assistant Professor, Criminology and Criminal Justice; Assistant Professor, Africana Studies

Korey Tillman’s research sits at the nexus of race, policing, and empire. His work examines how the imbricated histories of racial slavery and colonialism shape contemporary policing and push Blackness outside the category of Human. As an aboli…

Professor of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies

Prior to joining Northeastern Dr. Richard Wamai was a research fellow in the Takemi Program in International Health at Harvard School of Public Health. Before that, Dr. Wamai was a researcher at Oxford University (UK) Department of Social Policy. His…

Associate Teaching Professor

Dr. Earlene Avalón grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and attended the Boston Public Schools. She received her Bachelor’s of Science degree from Suffolk University in chemistry and secondary education and her Master’s degree in Public Health from Tufts

Director of Student Diversity and Success; Associate Teaching Professor in English

Melissa Pearson joined the faculty at Northeastern as a lecturer in the Writing Program in Fall 2015. She teaches first-year writing and advanced writing in the disciplines. Her research interests are in African American feminist rhetoric, first-year…

University Distinguished Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of Africana Studies

Professor Burnham joined the Northeastern University School of Law faculty in 2002. Her fields of expertise are civil and human rights, comparative constitutional rights, and international criminal law. She is the founder of the School of Law’s Civil…

Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Dr. Danielle Crookes holds a Doctor of Public Health in Epidemiology from Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health. As a social epidemiologist, her research examines structural, political, and social facto

Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology and Health Sciences

Dr. Crossing’s research interests focus on the development and application of critical theories to health service psychology, the social justice training and preparation of school psychology trainees and practitioners…

Associate Professor of Communications Studies, CAMD

Patricia Davis (Ph.D. University of California, San Diego) is a critical/cultural studies scholar whose research and teaching lies at the nexus of rhetoric and media studies. She studies public memory, identity, race, gender, and representation. Her …

Assistant Dean, Academic Scholarship, Mentoring and Outreach & Director of NU

Assistant Professor

Francesca Inglese (she/her) is an ethnographer and musician who specializes in the intersections of music, race & place, cultural politics, and the global circulation of Black popular music and dance. Her current ethnographic monograph addres…

Associate Professor, Director of College Student Development and Counseling

Professor Vanessa D. Johnson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology for Northeastern University. She is the former director of the College Student Development and Counseling Program.

Associate Professor of Sociology and International Affairs; Graduate Program Director, Sociology

Dr. Joseph joined the Northeastern faculty in 2018 after serving as Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University from 2013-2018. Prior to that, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Scholar at Harvard University. Her re…

Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature; Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Carla Kaplan, a professor of English, African-American and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, holds the Davis Distinguished Professorship in American Literature and writes on modern, African-American, and women’s history and culture. She has pub…

Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs; Director, Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy

Ted Landsmark has been a civic planner, civil rights and equity advocate, higher education administrator, arts and culture researcher, and community-engaged social activist in Boston and nationally. He serves on the leadership committee of the Northe…

Teaching Professor of Human Services

Matt Lee has taught courses in counseling theory and practice, cross-cultural psychology, ethnic identity and conflict (in Romania, Germany, Poland, and Croatia), intro to psychology, lifespan development, developmental psychology, race and empowerme…

Senior Lecturer of Sociology, College of Professional Studies, Inaugural Scholar-in-Residence at the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute, & Digital Creator

Dr. Yndia Lorick-Wilmot is a sociologist, public scholar, policy researcher, and storyteller whose work is viewed as scholar-activism. She is also the digital creator for Journeys of Belonging 2 Blackness (YouTube) & Talking Journeys of Belonging…

Associate Professor of History and International Affairs

Katherine Luongo is a specialist in the anthropological history of Kenya. She studies legal systems in colonial and contemporary Africa, global legal regimes, and human rights. She is the author of Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, 1900-1955 (Ca…

Campus Engagement and Collaborations Manager

m.luse@northeastern.edu 617.373.8012

Director of the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute; Research Associate of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy; Advisory Board Member, Humanities Center

Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Professor St. Louis’ research interests include police and technology, police-community relations, and surveillance. He uses quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods to address his research questions. Professor St. Louis recently served as the ma…

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Nina Sylvanus is a political and economic anthropologist whose work centers on capital and labor, value and aesthetics, infrastructure and technology, and, more broadly, critical transformations in the neoliberal global economy. Her regional speciali…

Assistant Professor in Music and Art + Design

Dr. Pierre-Valery Tchetgen is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in Music and Art and Design. He is formerly an educational researcher in the Principal Leadership Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. As Founder and …

Associate Teaching Professor

Corliss Thompson, Ph.D. has been a full time faculty member in the Graduate School of Education at Northeastern University since 2013 and has taught research methods, research design, and social justice courses.

Professor of Health Sciences and Applied Psychology & Associate Director of the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research, Affiliate Professor of Africana Studies

Idia Binitie Thurston, PhD (she/her) is a licensed clinical psychologist, professor of health sciences and applied psychology, Affiliate Professor of Africana Studies, and Associate Director of the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Resea…

Teaching Professor of Religion

Sheila Winborne is a Teaching Professor of Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. She received her Ph.D. in the study of religion from Harvard University (specialization theology and the visual arts), an MTS (concentration religion an…

Assistant Adjunct Professor

Dr. Ashley Adams is academically and professionally experienced in community services and development, public affairs, policy studies, nonprofit management, student services and leadership, preservation policy and planning, and more. Her current rese…

Director of Programs, Arlington Campus; Professor of the Practice in Public Policy and Urban Affairs

Tracy Corley, Director of Programs, Arlington Campus, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, is frequently sought as an expert, public speaker, and guest lecturer in community-engaged research and planning, public policy, law, sustainability, env…

Visual Content Creator

Imani Karpowich-Smith is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and library worker from the East Bay. Earning her BFA and a BA in Ethnic Studies from Mills College, Smith combines these two frameworks to break down investigations into societal struc…

Professor of Business Practice, John and Martha Davidson Endowed Professor, Affiliate Professor of Africana Studies

In addition to her roles at Mills College at Northeastern University, Lahr is president and CEO of Integral Consulting Group, a woman-/minority-owned management consulting practice; she’s also the founder and executive director of L.C. and Lillie Cox…

Professor of English

Mills College Germaine Thompson Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Program Head, Transcultural Francophone Studies & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Brinda Mehta is an award-winning scholar of postcolonial literature, transnational feminist thought, and Francophone Studies. Her publications include five monographs along with three co-edited journal issues on Indo-Caribbean/Afro-Caribbean Intellec…

Professor of English

Director of Graduate Student Services and Alumnae Engagement, Director of Community & Belonging,

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Africana Studies

From Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Tiffany Bailey is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Africana Studies Program. She received her BA in French and History as well as her MA in French & Applied Linguistics from the University of Alabama. In 2024, s…