Fellows
Lisette Abdiruhman
JHU-MSU Graduate Teaching Fellows
MA, Union Institute and University in History and Culture
Gilman Hall, Suite 90
[email protected]
Lisette is currently a doctoral candidate at Morgan State University, where she is researching Black Women and Islamic Movements in the Early 20th Century 1920-1950. She will use her 20 years of experience working in independent and public charter schools and research to help develop innovative courses using Africana archives and object-based teaching, and will offer a course at Morgan State in the spring on Black Women in the Archive of Slavery. She will also serve as an advisor to undergraduate Dean’s Undergraduate Research Awardees managed by Gabrielle Dean, Sheridan Libraries Curator.
Jennie Chaplin
Slavery and Justice Curatorial Fellow
PhD, American Studies
Gilman 90 B
[email protected]
Jennie Chaplin is an advocate for the cultural arts and the Gullah Geechee culture, Jennie Chaplin grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and now resides in Washington, DC. She holds a Master’s degree in African American Literature from Howard University. She received her PhD in American Studies from the University of Maryland, specializing in museum studies, historic preservation, and material culture. Her articles on the culinary and visual arts, music, and social justice have been published in Whetstone Magazine, History @Work in The National Council of Public History, and Whetstone Magazine. In her spare time, she loves reading, writing, watching documentaries, and becoming acquainted with the neighborhood’s four-legged friends.
Kai Clemons
Graduate Research Assistant Historical Justice, RIC
Kai Clemons is a graduate student at Morgan State University (MSU) studying African American Studies. She first began her academic journey when she minored in Africana Studies at Kent State University earning her BA in Psychology.
Throughout their undergraduate career, they developed an affinity for research and travel while also working as a research assistant, a McNair Scholar, and an abroad-learning student. They became a published researcher under the PsychoHairapy Research Lab in 2020. Her overall work focuses on the nuances, cultivation, and sustainability of Black identity among Black youth. Currently, Kai serves as a Program Assistant for the AAAD (African American & African Diaspora Studies) minor at MSU and recently returned from Cali, Colombia in collaboration with a nonprofit that provides political education and diasporic study abroad opportunities for youth of Baltimore. She is currently finishing her MA thesis that analyzes the Black Panther Party’s educational initiatives and its pedagogical impact on the self-concept of Black youth within the 20th century.
Jeneanne Collins
Community Arts Fellow
MA, Maryland Institute College of Art
Gilman Hall, Suite 90 B
[email protected]
Jeneanne Collins is a practicing performance poet and community artist, and sometimes a mixed – media creator. Recently, she served as an Artist in Residence at Union Baptist Church where she conducted oral archive interviews as part of the B&O Railroad Museum’s Oral History Project in partnership with the church. She developed a series of workshop responses entitled “Churches & Trains”, Black History Every Day. Collins is also a member of the #nopermission collective, a group of artists that use visual, performance and alternative art to activate/charge historically oppressed spaces.
Dr. Sherella Cupid
Document Fellow
Ph.D., University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Sherella Cupid (Ph.D., University of Maryland, Baltimore County) is the Document Fellow for Inheritance Baltimore. Dr. Cupid’s research uplifts the experiences of Black women and girls in education and work, with a focus on sister circles in health, media, and education, as well as mentorship for Black doctoral women and Black faculty women. Additionally, she is a co-editor for the series, Research, Theory, and Practice Within Academic Affairs, which seeks to explore current trends, practices, and challenges within academic affairs. Lastly, she creates digital sister circles via her podcasts, Sista Docs Exhale (SDE) and Lirae Journey.
Jessica Douglas
Community Arts Fellow
MLIS candidate, University of Maryland, College Park
Gilman Hall, Suite 90
[email protected]
Jessica Douglas is an archivist and researcher from Baltimore whose work focuses on community-based, participatory, and reparative theory and practice in archives and libraries. In addition to her prior work as a reference archivist, she works with individuals and organizations to conduct archival and historical research, particularly related to Black history and local (Baltimore and Maryland) history. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and History from Fordham University in the Bronx, NY and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Library and Information Science at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr. Walter Gill
Elder in Residence, Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts
Walter (Wali) Arthur Harris Gill was born in Greenville, Mississippi. He received his public education in Jefferson City, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland. He was the first African American to graduate from the previously all-white and all-male Baltimore City College High School in 1955; and is in the school’s Hall of Fame.
Gill earned a B.S. and received his R.O.T.C. Commission from Morgan State College in 1960. For 20 years, he was a university administrator or professor at four universities: Bowie State University, Morgan State University (where he was the first faculty hired for the Telecommunications Department in 1978), the University of Nebraska (where he received a recommendation for tenure), and Millersville University. Dr. Gill is a Life Member of the Morgan State University National Alumni Association and the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
Dana Green
HBCU Graduate Assistantships for Programming and Digital Publishing & Oral History Fellow
MA, History
Gilman Hall, Suite 90
[email protected]
Dana Green is a native of Akron, Ohio and began her career in history as an undergraduate student at Bethune Cookman University. While there she worked as a tour guide in Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune’s home. After graduating from Bethune Cookman, she began a Master’s Degree in History Program at North Carolina Central University. She is currently a PhD Student majoring in History with a concentration on feminism and the civil rights movement at Morgan State University.
Sheharyar Imran
Graduate Research Assistant Historical Justice, RIC
Please add this bio with Sheharyar’s profile.
Sheharyar Imran is a PhD candidate in Political Science specializing in International Relations and Political Theory. His research and teaching interests include political ecology, land rights and dispossession, racial capitalism, postcolonial/critical race theory, and global development. Sheharyar’s dissertation explores how modern global order is produced by the historical processes and extractive logics of environmental racism and racial capitalism. In particular, he examines the dynamics of socio-ecological exploitation underlying territorial expansion, the globalization of capitalist property regimes, Eurocentric regimes of sovereignty and belonging, and the transnational expansion of mega-infrastructure.
Sheharyar is the 2023-24 Graduate Fellow for the Program in Racism, Immigration (RIC) and works closely with the Critical Diaspora Studies Working Group. His research and teaching have been supported by the Program in Medicine, Science, and Humanities (MSH) and the Dean’s Teaching Fellowship awarded by the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Previously, Sheharyar earned his B.A. in International Studies from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Jamal R. Moore
Artist in Residence, Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts
Jamal R. Moore is a native of Baltimore, Maryland who is a multi-instrumentalist, composer/performer and educator. His background includes California Institute of The Arts (M.F.A. 2012), Berklee College of Music (B.M 2005), Eubie Blake Jazz Orchestra (2000) under the direction of Christopher Calloway Brooks, and the historical acclaimed Frederick Douglass Sr. High whose notable alumni include Thurgood Marshall, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Ennis.
Some notable luminaries Jamal has worked and recorded with are Wadada Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, Nicole Mitchell, Archie Shepp, David Ornette Cherry, Tomeka Reid, Dr. Bill Cole, DJ Lou Gorbea, George Duke, Sheila E, David Murray, JD Parran, Ras Moshe, Hprizm, (Antipop Consortium) Tatsua Nakatani, Hamid Drake, and the late Yahyah Abdul Majid (Sun Ra Arkestra). He is an affiliate of The Pan African Peoples Arkestra of the late Horace Tapscott, Black Praxis of David Boykin, and member of Konjur Collective.
Jamal currently leads his own groups, Akebulan Arkestra, Napata Strings, Black Elements Quartet, Organix Trio, and Mojuba Duo. “As musicians we are healers of humanity and have a responsibility to cleanse disease through positive tones, frequencies and vibrations. Music is the nucleus and universal language of the oversoul, mind, body and spirit,” he says.
Xavier Walker
Community Arts Fellow
BA, English, Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Gilman 90 D
[email protected]
Xavier Walker is the newly appointed Inheritance Baltimore Community Archives Fellow and a recent graduate of Lafayette College where he earned a BA in English and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. Throughout his undergraduate career he worked with a variety of archives and collections as an intern at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, an EXCEL scholar, and a student worker with Skillman Library’s Digital Scholarship Services. Most notably he spearheaded the ABC Archives Project, a digital archive of over 500 artifacts that chronicle the history and culture of Black life at Lafayette College. Xavier has a passion for community building and enjoys picking up new hobbies, the most recent of which include DJing, rock climbing, and building LEGOs.
Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson
Africana Archives Curatorial Fellow
PhD, Ethnomusicology, Indiana University
Gilman 90 C
[email protected]
Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson embraced the power of music, expressive art, and history during her formative years in Birmingham, AL. She later turned her interests into formal study earning a BA in music from Berea College and a MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from Indiana University. Her work has focused on the research, performance, and preservation of African American music with an emphasis on sacred music in film and media. She is also passionate about the intersections of education and community engagement and partners with artists and educators to research and celebrate the important contributions of African Americans in the arts. Recently, she served as the Manager of Choir Curriculum and Performance at a Washington, D.C. based arts organization where she developed and coordinated educational and program content for their resident community choirs. She currently serves as an Africana Archives Curatorial Fellow with the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts at Johns Hopkins University.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Daniel Cumming
RIC Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, New York University
Gilman 90 E
[email protected]
Daniel Cummings has a Ph.D. in U.S. History from New York University, an M.A in Social Sciences from University of Chicago, and an M.A. in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University. His research examines racial inequality in twentieth-century Baltimore by exploring the shifting terrain of housing, labor, and health through the rise of medical institutions and the fall of manufacturing. As I argue in my dissertation, the toxic features of the Jim Crow industrial order became social, political, even embodied, foundations of the postindustrial metropolis. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Cummings lived in Baltimore and taught high school students at Carver Vocational-Technical High School.
Tali Ziv
RIC Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Gilman 90 E
[email protected]
Tali Ziv’s research explores dynamics of care at the intersection of community-based health services and mass incarceration in the United States. She charts the processes, both historical and contemporary, through which care emerges from the political-economic relations that govern racialized, urban inequality. Spanning the fields of Anthropology, Public Health, and Africana Studies, Dr. Ziv’s research attends to the everyday experiences of giving and receiving health services in contexts of addiction, incarceration, and community reentry from jail/prison.
Staff
Tonika Berkley
Archivist for Africana Collections
MA, University of Maryland, College Park
410-516-5492
[email protected]
Ms. Berkley is a historical researcher, museum educator and curator, working for various museums in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia, including the Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Industry, The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, and Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. In 2018-19, Ms. Berkley served as Research Coordinator and Curator of prototype physical and digital exhibitions for “Education Will Be Our Pride: The Colored School at the Peale (1878-89)”, and curator of a 3D scanned tour of the Peale building, based on the history of Male and Female Colored School No. 1. She also coordinated the development of a microsite, “School1,” an online repository for the history of 19th century education of African Americans in Baltimore City and surrounding counties.
Ms. Berkley earned her Bachelor’s degree from UMBC in Sociology/Anthropology, her Master’s Degree in Applied Anthropology (Heritage/Historical Archeology track) from the University of Maryland College Park and her teaching credentials from Notre Dame of Maryland University. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Arts Administration and Museum Leadership from Drexel University.
Renee White Buchanan
Budget Analyst
BS, Accounting
Gilman Hall, Suite 90
[email protected]
Mrs. Renee White has many years of experience in federal, state, and local grants management. Renee obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from University of Baltimore, and Graduate Certificate in Business Administration from University of Baltimore.
Angela Koukoui
Co-Director of the JHU-UB Community Archives Program
MLIS, University of Maryland, College Park
410-837-4268
[email protected]
Angela Koukoui is an Outreach Archivist and Public Service Coordinator at the University of Baltimore RLB Library, Special Collections, and Archives, where she leads instruction sessions in archival literacy. Angela has taught Community Archive Workshops through various partnerships and collaborations since 2017. In her archival work, Angela worked on the Preserve the Baltimore Uprising project at the Maryland Historical Society and curated The Baltimore Cultural Arts Program, 1964-1993 photography exhibit at UB in 2016. A revised version of The Baltimore Cultural Arts Program, 1964-1993, was featured as a digital exhibit in 2020. In 2021, Angela curated 40 years of HIV/AIDS digital exhibit collaborating with the Baltimore City Health Department in spring 2021.
Shawntay Stocks
Assistant Director of Fellowships and Community Engagement
PhD, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Merganthaler 227
(443) 297-7827
[email protected]
Dr. Shawntay Stocks has over a decade of experience in service and community-based learning, coordinating service and diversity programs, and teaching. Dr. Stocks obtained her Bachelor’s degree in History from Guilford College, Master’s degree in English and African-American Literature from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and her Ph.D. in the Language, Literacy and Culture program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her dissertation research focused on faculty diversity within higher education. Dr. Stocks is trained in Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) which she utilizes in planning and executing training in areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and community-based learning. Additionally, Dr. Stocks uses her poetry as a reflective tool within her workshops and trainings.
Faculty
Lawrence Jackson
Convener, Working Group on Slavery, Conciliation and Justice
PhD, Stanford University
Jennifer Kingsley
Associate Teaching Professor and Director, Museums and Society
PhD, Johns Hopkins University (History of Art)
