Participants

Colorism 2.0 Participants

• Adah Ward Randolph, Professor of Educational Research and Evaluation | Ohio University

  Dr. Adah Ward Randolph is a Professor of Educational Research and Evaluation (EDRE) at Ohio University in the Patton College of Education. She specializes in qualitative methodology, cultural studies, and the history of education. She received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in Educational Policy and Leadership with specializations in African American and Women’s education history, urban education policy, race, class and gender studies, curriculum, and qualitative methodology. Her primary research has focused on African American teachers and principals in urban communities in the 19th and 20th century urban North and South. Additionally, she has examined the constructs of intersectionality in the lives of African American women including autoethnographically framed research.

  Dr. Randolph has over fifty publications in Tier I journals including Qualitative Inquiry, The Journal of African American History, Urban Education, Educational Studies, Journal of School Leadership, and History of Education Quarterly. Her most recent publications are “Black Joy: Love, Intimacy and Sexuality Amongst Black Intellectuals in the Academy,” in the Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships; “What Color Are You?” A Critical Autoethographical Treatise about Race and  Color,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Colorism; and “Black Teachers on Teaching, Aging, and Retirement: The Girst Generation to Retire,” in Pedagogica Historica (forthcoming). Dr. Randolph is committed to the advancement of all people across all their intersectional positionalities. She is a member of many professional organizations and served in leadership roles including the Presidency of the History of Education Society.

• Aisha Bilkhair, PhD, Research Advisor | National Archives; Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Abu Dhabi

  Aisha Bilkhair PhD is a Research Advisor at the National Library and Archives. A Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University, she holds a bachelor’s degree in filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute (USA), a master’s degree in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University (USA) and a PhD in Arab Gulf Studies from the University of Exeter (UK). She is a member of several associations and committees such as the African Diaspora in Asia, Heads the Tolerance Committee and the Young Historian Award committee, among others. Recognized as an expert in oral history, ethnographic studies, and the African Diaspora, her chief research interests are cross-cultural studies, women, youth, and the transformation of identity. 

  Dr. Bilkhair is a bi-weekly newspaper columnist who lectures and writes extensively on these topics, with published articles ranging from cross-cultural dialogue to the evolution of women’seducation in the country. She is appointed member to the UAE National committee for Folk Music and the UAE representative in the International Council for Traditional Music & Dance (ICTMD) and the International Oral History Association (IOHA). Dr. Bilkhair is a graduate of the Government Leadership Program, Executive Leaders. She was recognized as one of the Most Influential People of African Decent (MIPAD) Creatives Edition in 2022 and many other awards since. In 2024 Dr Aisha was awarded the UAE Medal for Culture and Creativity in the 'Giving Class' Cultural Heritage and National Identity, presented during the 2024 UAE Government Annual Meeting.

• Aisha Phoenix, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Lecturer | King’s College London

  Dr Aisha Phoenix is a Social Justice lecturer at the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College London. She is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Principal Investigator of the Understanding Colourism Among Young People in the UK research project. She conducted the first major sociological study that explores colourism in the UK with Dr Nadia Craddock and has discussed colourism on various BBC programs, LBC, Deutsche Welle, and podcasts. Her publications include: ‘Colourism and the Politics of Beauty’ (Feminist Review) and ‘Colourism — how shade bias perpetuates prejudice against people with dark skin’ (The Conversation). With Dr Craddock she co-authored the chapter “Complicating the Idea of Light-Skin Privilege in the UK”, published in Hall and Mishra’s The Routledge International Handbook of Colorism, and journal articles exploring the Everyday Colourism Scale, how Black men experience colourism, how colourism operates in the family and how it affects relationships between women of different skin shades.

• Andrew Francis-Tan, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and Senior Lecturer | Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

  Andrew Francis-Tan is a senior lecturer and assistant dean at the LKY School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Previously, he was an associate professor of economics at Emory University. He received his PhD in economics at the University of Chicago. Professor Francis-Tan engages in quantitative research in the fields of education, labor, and demography. His current research aims to understand patterns of inequality, public policies intended to empower vulnerable populations, and factors that influence social identities like race, gender, and religion.

• Angela Dixon, Assistant Professor | Emory University

  Angela Dixon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Emory University. Her research examines patterns of inequality, with a particular focus on how conceptualizations of race, ethnicity, skin color, and discrimination shape patterns of stratification across societies. Building on these interests, Dr. Dixon also investigates the lives of the bereaved after loss. Specifically, she explores the negative health and socioeconomic impacts of bereavement, with a focus on the implications of Black-White disparities in mortality.

  Dr. Dixon’s research has been supported by various funders including the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIH K01 Career Development Award), the Spencer Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the American Sociological Association. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Dr. Dixon was a David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Population and Development Studies at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy with a concentration in Demography from Princeton University and her BA in Psychology with a second major in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

• Anju Mary Paul, Professor of Social Research and Public Policy | New York University Abu Dhabi

  Anju Mary Paul is Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). She holds a Bachelor's in Business Administration (First Class Honors) from the National University of Singapore, a Master's in Journalism from New York University, and a PhD in Sociology and Public Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

  Anju is an international migration scholar with research interests that include emergent migration patterns, particularly to, from, and within Asia and the Middle East, gender and labor, globalization, domestic work, and care policy. She is the award-winning author of Multinational Maids: Stepwise Migration in a Global Labor Market (Cambridge University Press 2017) and Asian Scientists on the Move: Changing Science in a Changing Asia (Cambridge University Press 2021). She is also the editor of Local Encounters in a Global City (Ethos Books 2017). Her research has also been published in top journals in sociology and migration studies. She created the Global Care Policy Index, which quantitatively scores countries on the degree of social and labor policy protections they provide unpaid family caregivers and paid domestic workers.

  Prior to joining NYUAD, Paul served as an inaugural faculty member at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. She has won numerous awards for her research, including the 2018 Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the 2018 Max Weber Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of the ASA.

• Ann Morning, James Weldon Johnson Professor of Sociology; Divisional Dean for Social Sciences; Vice Dean for Global and Strategic Initiatives | New York University

  Ann Morning is the Divisional Dean for Social Sciences, Vice Dean for Global and Strategic Initiatives, and James Weldon Johnson Professor of Sociology in New York University’s Faculty of Arts and Science. A member of NYU Abu Dhabi’s Affiliated Faculty, she served as Academic Director of 19 Washington Square North, NYUAD’s home in New York, from 2019 to 2022. Trained in demography, her research focuses on race, ethnicity, and the sociology of science, especially as they pertain to census classification worldwide and to individuals’ concepts of difference. She is the author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (University of California Press 2011) and An Ugly Word: Rethinking Race in Italy and the United States (with Marcello Maneri, Russell Sage 2022).

  Morning was a 2008-09 Fulbright Research Fellow at the University of Milan-Bicocca, a 2014-15 Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, and a 2019 Visiting Professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. She was a member of the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations from 2013 to 2019, and of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2022-23 Committee on the Use of Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry as Population Descriptors in Genomics Research. Morning holds her BA in Economics and Political Science magna cum laude from Yale University, a Master’s of International Affairs from Columbia University, and her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University.

• Cóilín Parsons, Associate Professor of English | Georgetown University

  Cóilín Parsons is associate professor of English at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he also holds (along with Rogaia Abusharaf and Ananya Chakravarti) the Sonneborn Chair in Indian Ocean Studies. He writes about postcolonial and global south studies, global modernism, and questions of space and scale in literature. He is also associate editor of Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim.

• Edward Telles, Distinguished Professor of Sociology | University of California Irvine

  Dr. Edward Telles is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and former professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Princeton University, and UCLA. He is also currently a Research Associate and board member of Centre de Estudis Demogràfics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.

  A member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Telles has reoriented the field of Sociology beyond the US black-white paradigm through his research and writings on color, race, and ethnicity globally, particularly in Latin America and for Latinos in the United States. 

  A recipient of numerous awards in the field of immigration and race, Telles’ work has been hailed as path-breaking. The principal investigator on the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (PERLA), his work has been closely empirical and based mostly on social surveys, several of which he collected.

  Professor Telles’ work is well known in Latin America and has been widely published in Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese.

• Hessa Alnuaimi, Assistant Professor | University of Sharjah

  Dr. Hessa Alnuaimi is an Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern politics and history at the University of Sharjah. Before joining Sharjah, she was an Associate Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, where she earned her PhD, which was awarded the APSA MENA Best Dissertation Prize. She also held a fellowship at Harvard University. Her research critically examines state formation in the Gulf through decolonial and critical race frameworks, exploring how the region’s integration into modernity and the global capitalist economy has shaped politics of legitimacy, authority, and migration.

• Majid Hannoum, Professor of Anthropology and Fellow at the Africa Institute | University of Kansas

  Majid Hannoum is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas, USA. He is currently Ali Mazrui Senior Fellow at the Africa Institute in Sharjah. He earned a PhD in Arabic and Comparative Literature from Sorbonne University, France and a second PhD in History and Anthropology from Princeton University, USA. He is the editor of Practicing Sufism: Sufi Politics and Performance in Africa (2016) and the author of several books, including Secular Narrations and Transdisciplinary Knowledge (2023), The Invention of the Maghreb: Between Africa and the Middle East (2021), Living Tangier: Migration, Race, and Illegality in a Moroccan City (2020), Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (2010), and Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine (2001).

  He has held teaching positions at Princeton University, the College of New Jersey, the New School for Social Research in NYC, and Bard College. His research experience includes roles as a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, and a Senior Fulbright Fellow (twice). He has also served as a Senior Fellow at the Aga Khan Centre in London.

• Michaela Angela Davis, Writer, Creative Director, Producer and Image Activist

  Michaela Angela Davis is a writer, creative director, producer and image activist focusing on the intersections of gender, race, fashion, culture, beauty, and identity. She is the creator and executive producer of HULU’s The Hair Tales, a dynamic six part docu-series celebrating Black women’s identity, beauty, culture and humanity, uniquely expressed through the stories in hair featuring Ayanna Pressley, CHIKA, Marsai Martin, Chlöe Bailey, and fellow executive producers Tracee Ellis Ross and Oprah Winfrey- nominated for two NAACP Image Awards. Davis collaborated with Mariah Carey on The Meaning of Mariah Carey a memoir of her identity — an instant #1 New York Times Bestseller.

  She has spoken globally and has been a cultural contributor and writer for The Atlantic, Allure, CNN, MSNBC, and The BBC. Her most recent project is Something About Sumter, a short documentary film she directed and co-executive produced about the historic Clyburn's Beauty Salon. She is cofounder of the Sumter CROWN Act Coalition and GUCCI Changemaker councilmember. Davis is currently writing her memoirs in her maternal ancestral home Sumter, South Carolina.

• Monique Kelly, Assistant Professor | Michigan State University

  Dr. Monique D. A. Kelly is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and core faculty in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLAS) at Michigan State University. Her research primarily focuses on racial stratification and inequality, with a particular emphasis on the Anglophone Caribbean. Using primarily quantitative methods, her work examines how race — measured as multidimensional — shapes socioeconomic outcomes, specifically in relation to ideologies of racial mixing (or mestizaje/creolization). She investigates how these ideologies impact the recognition, explanations, and outcomes of social inequality. While traditional measures of inequality such as income (household or individual) and education are central to her work, she also considers alternative indicators like household amenities, homeownership, and household crowding. Dr. Kelly argues that these expense-based and unconventional economic measures provide a more reliable and insightful understanding of wealth attainment and standards of living in developing nations within the Anglophone Caribbean.

  Beyond socioeconomic well-being, Dr. Kelly also explores how ideologies of racial mixing affect racial self-identification, claims to nationhood, and racial attitudes within the Anglophone Caribbean. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Race and Social Problems, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, and Ethnic and Racial Studies.

• Mostafa Minawi, Professor of History | Cornell University

  Mostafa Minawi is Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy from the Sahara to the Hijaz (Stanford University Press, 2016) and the Albert Hourani Book Prize co-winner, Losing Istanbul: Arab-Ottoman Imperialists and the End of Empire (SUP, 2022) and a number of articles on international law, late 19th-century imperialism, and microhistory. Both his books have been translated into Turkish and Arabic. His work explores the intimacies of Global History by investigating Ottoman imperialism and inter-imperial competition in central and northeastern Africa, southwestern Asia, and southeastern Europe. He does that by focusing on archival documents from the Global South.

  He has held several prestigious fellowships in Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, and the United States and has taught in the United States, South Korea, and Lebanon. He is currently working on his third monograph tentatively titled, The Global History of a Roof Top in Jerusalem at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Geopolitics of Imperialism from Palestine to the Horn of Africa. In addition to his research-based scholarship, he participates in Public History projects, such history documentaries, historical video games, TED.Ed animated videos on the history of the Ottoman Empire, and his Op-eds have appeared on Al-Jazeera and the Wall Street Journal amongst others. Currently, he is a fellow at the National Humanities Center in the United States.

• Nadia Craddock, Senior Research Fellow - Social Scientist | Centre for Appearance Research, University of the West of England Bristol

  Dr. Nadia Craddock, PhD is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Appearance Research, UWE Bristol and a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Kings College London. Nadia specializes in body image and colourism research and has co-developed several body image interventions for children and young people. Together, with Dr. Aisha Phoenix, Nadia has conducted qualitative research examining how minoritised ethnic adults in the UK experience and understand colourism. Additionally, Nadia led the development of the Everyday Colourism Scale — a brief measure to assess people’s experiences of skin shade prejudice in daily life.

• Nathalie Handal, Professor of Literature and Creative Writing | New York University Abu Dhabi

  Nathalie Handal is described as a “contemporary Orpheus, and an urgent and singular voice in contemporary poetry.” She has lived in four continents, worked in over 20 theatrical productions, and is the author of 10 award winning books, translated into over 15 languages, including Life in a Country Album; and The Republics, winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award. Among her many honors, Handal is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for The Arts, PEN Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Fondazione di Venezia, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, and Africa Institute. She is Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at New York University Abu Dhabi, and writes the column, “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders.

• Neelima Jeychandran, Assistant Professor | Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar

  Neelima Jeychandran is an Assistant Professor of African Visual Culture in the Department of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar. She is an ethnographer, editor, and scholar who works on oceanic circulations, trade objects, and material histories of West and East Africa and western India. She is co-editor of the book Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds (Routledge, 2020) and the co-editor of the Verge journal issue on “Indian Ocean Studies, African-Asian Affinities” (2022), and the series co-editor of the Routledge Indian Ocean and Trans-Asia book series. She is the Co-PI of the GA: MA Lab (Global Asia: Mobilities and Arts), a research lab that aims to study cultures, arts, and people in transit in the African and Indian Ocean worlds. She has received several research grants and fellowships, including the Humanities Without Walls seed grant and the Africa Multiple Research Fellowship at the University of Bayreuth.

• Nikos Nikiforakis, Professor of Economics, NYU Abu Dhabi; Global Network Professor of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Science, NYU; Co-Director of the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (C-BID) | NYU Abu Dhabi

  Nikos Nikiforakis is a Professor of Economics at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), a Global Network Professor at NYU, and Co-Director of the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (C-BID). He previously held senior positions at the University of Melbourne, the Max Planck Institute, and the CNRS in France. A behavioral economist, Nikos studies social cohesion and justice, focusing on social norms, inequality, cooperation, stereotypes, and institutional design. His work integrates insights from sociology, political science, psychology, and philosophy, relying on experimental methods in lab, field, and online settings. His research has appeared in leading journals such as American Economic Review, Nature Communications, and PNAS, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Australian Research Council, and Economic and Social Research Council. He has extensive editorial experience, serving as Founding Co-Editor of the Journal of the Economic Science Association and Associate Editor at European Economic Review, and Journal of Economic Psychology.

  Nikos actively engages with policymakers, applying behavioral science to inform policy. He has advised government entities in Australia and the UAE, including the Presidential Court and the Department of Community Development. He currently explores global patterns of colorism using the World Behaviors and Stereotypes Dataset, a unique dataset containing among others incentivized beliefs from 70 countries accounting for 90 percent of the world population.

• Renée Blake, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Social and Cultural Analysis | New York University

  Renée Blake is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Linguistics and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University (NYU) with affiliations in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Department of Anthropology. She is a founding member of the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD). She has served as an Associate Producer, Producer, and contributor to the EMMY-winning film series, Talking Black in America. She currently serves as the Chair of the JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) Council in the College of Arts and Science at NYU, and is a Faculty Lead (Ghana) for NYU’s Presidential Honors Scholars for Sophomores and Juniors. Her research examines language contact, race, ethnicity, and class with a focus on African American English, Caribbean English  Creoles, and New York City English. Her quantitative and qualitative work has been published in several professional journals and books, and she regularly does public interfacing around language in society. She is the co-founder of United Solutions Consultancy Group, a firm specializing in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), and whose mission is to increase cultural competencies and capacities and bring people closer together through their humanity. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics, a Master of Science in Linguistics, and a Bachelor of Sciences in Biology, all from Stanford University. She also studied at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia in Italy. She was a National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded scholar at the University of Amsterdam and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West Indies, Barbados. Dr. Blake is the recipient of numerous other awards and accolades.

• Richard Pithouse, Distinguished Research Fellow | University of Connecticut, Global Center for Advanced Studies

  Richard Pithouse is an academic, columnist, journalist, editor, and activist who has taught in politics, philosophy, and history departments. He also teaches in trade union and social movement education projects in South Africa and elsewhere. His academic work has included political theory, with a focus on Frantz Fanon, urban studies, social movement studies, international relations, and musicology.

  Pithouse is currently an International Research Scholar at the University of Connecticut, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Professor at Large at the University of the Western Cape, a columnist with the Mail & Guardian, and the Africa Coordinator for the Progressive International.

  He was the founding editor of New Frame, which Achille Mbembe described as “one of the most exciting political, intellectual and cultural projects to emerge in Africa” and “arguably the top intellectual media platform on our Continent.” He was also the founding head of Inkani Books, which published a Zulu translation of The Wretched of the Earth and a collection of Amílcar Cabral’s writings, among other books. Pithouse is also the founder of The Forge, a cultural centre, and The Commune, a radical bookshop, both based in Johannesburg. His bestselling book, Writing the Decline, was praised by Mbembe as "a very important book from one of our most talented historians of the present."

• Robert Reece, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology | University of Texas at Austin

  Robert L. Reece is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin where his research explores race and racialization in the United States through some of the mechanisms that create and complicate race. Specifically, he examines the origins and maintenance of colorism in black America, the historical role of body size in creating race in America, and the long-term impacts of chattel slavery on inequality in the American South. His work has been published in a wide variety of peer reviewed journals and media outlets. He is currently contracted to write two book manuscripts: the forthcoming The Shades of Black Folk, which analyzes colorism in black America, and Not Today, which explores violent resistance during chattel slavery. He also serves as an expert consultant for the Federal Public Defenders Office in Fort Worth, Texas where he assists with mitigation reports to reduce the length of incarceration for inmates borne into severe social circumstance. Relatedly, he serves as a fellow for the Diversity and Resiliency Institute of El Paso, where he creates educational content that they use for anti-racist trainings and continuing education credits for social workers. Dr. Reece received his PhD in Sociology from Duke University in 2017. He is from Leland, Mississippi, a small town in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

• Robert Patterson, Professor of African American Studies | Georgetown University

  Dr. Robert J. Patterson is a professor of African American Studies and served as the inaugural chair of the Department of African American Studies at Georgetown University. He is the author of Destructive Desires: Rhythm and Blues Culture and the Politics of Racial Equality and Exodus Politics: Civil Rights and Leadership in African American Literature and Culture, co-editor of The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture, and editor of the award-winning Black Cultural Production After Civil Rights. Currently, he is working on a book titled Black Equity, Black Equality: Reparation and Black Communities and recently completed African American Slave Narratives: A Very Short Introduction, which is under contract with Oxford University Press.

• Rogaia M. Abusharaf, Professor of Anthropology | Georgetown University in Qatar

  Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf is a Professor of Anthropology at SFSQ-Georgetown University. She is the author of Wanderings (Cornell U. Press) and Transforming Displaced Women in the Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement and Darfur Allegory, both from the University of Chicago Press. She is the founding Editor of Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim (Duke University Press). Her ethnographic work focuses on cultural anthropology and feminist ethnography, and her fieldwork encompasses Sudan, Zanzibar, and the Sultanate of Oman.

• Ronald Hall, Professor of Social Work | Michigan State University

  Dr. Ronald E. Hall has been studying colorism for approximately thirty years. In 1990 he testified as expert witness for American’s first African American colorism litigation Morrow vs. IRS Atlanta Federal District Court, Atlanta, GA. Convinced that colorism is not exclusive to African Americans, Dr. Hall spent the following twelve years traveling to world locations such as India, Japan, Europe, and Africa where he conducted surveys and focus groups on colorism to substantiate his work. He is currently the author of twenty books and over two-hundred academic papers including colorism. He has conferred with doctoral students at such institutions as University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, University of Cape Town and recent dissertation committee assignments at Clemson University.

  Dr. Hall’s media consultations include interviews with U.S. Consulate General, BET Television, and appearance in Oprah Winfrey’s Light Girls documentary. Dr. Hall consulted for a member of the U.S. Congress U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush’s Lovin the Skin I’m in and reference to “Racism and Obama’s candidacy” in TIME Magazine. Dr. Hall’s most recent book 2024 co-edited with Dr. Neha Mishra The Routledge International Handbook of Colorism (1st ed.). His current work pertains to the study of reverse colorism.

• Sara Gualteieri, Professor of History and American Studies | Georgetown University Qatar

  Sarah Gualtieri is Professor of History and American Studies at Georgetown University-Qatar. Her research and teaching bridge several fields, notably Arab American Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies and Middle East Migration studies. Her work focuses on issues of race, gender, and history-making in migrant communities. She conducts research in English, Arabic, French, and Spanish.

  Gualtieri’s publications include two books, numerous articles and works of public-facing scholarship. Her first book, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora examines the history of Arab racial formation in the United States with a particular focus on the problematic of “whiteness.” It traces how Arabs came to be officially classified as white by the US government, and how different Arab groups interpreted, accepted, or contested this racial classification over the course of the 20th century.

  Gualtieri's second book, Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California uncovers the stories of Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian migrants in Southern California, focusing on connections to and through Latin America and the multiethnic solidarities that emerge from them. Arab Routes won the Arab American Book Award and the Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies.

  Gualtieri has received numerous national fellowships, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and Social Science Research Council (SSRC). She is also the recipient of two undergraduate teaching awards.

• Wilnelia Gutierrez, Associate Vice President, Strategy and Operations | New York University

  Wilnelia Gutierrez is the associate vice president of strategy and operations within the Office of Global Inclusion. With over 25 years of experience at NYU, Wilnelia plays a pivotal role in shaping and executing OGI’s strategic initiatives, ensuring alignment with the University’s commitment to fostering global inclusion. In her role, she partners closely with senior leaders across NYU globally and provides operational and strategic leadership across key programs and administrative functions that support students, faculty, and staff.

  Wilnelia began her career at NYU working with students and faculty in Liberal Studies and has since held key leadership roles in University Relations and Public Affairs, where she collaborated with university administration to strengthen institutional relations and community engagement. Her expertise spans organizational management, strategic planning, and program development, with a strong focus on building impactful, inclusive initiatives that support NYU's global mission.

  A native of the Dominican Republic and long-time New Yorker, Wilnelia is deeply committed to advancing access and inclusion in education. Wilnelia holds a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from NYU’s College of Arts and Science and a Master of Public Administration specializing in Nonprofit Management from NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

• Yaba Blay, Creative Producer | BlackStar Creative, LLC

  Dr. Yaba Blay is an “Independent People’s Worker” who works in service of Black liberation every day. A scholar-activist, cultural worker, and storyteller, her practice centers Black experiences globally, especially those of Black women and girls. A maroon academic, her research and scholarship engages the Black body, with particular focus on beauty politics. 

  A blooming visual artist, her film, The Whites of Our Eyes, won the 2024 BlackStar Film Festival Shine Award, given annually to a first-time filmmaker.  She created and directed the popular webseries, ‘Professional Black Girl,’ and in 2012, she served as a producer on Who is Black in America?, CNN's television documentary based largely on her research on Black racial identity.  

  Dr. Blay’s commentary is featured in A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond, a permanent installation exhibited in the National Museum of African American History and Culture; and she is the author of the bestselling, award-winning book, One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race.