Pre-Conference Workshops

Wednesday, October 15 @ 8:30 am – 12:30 pm

Students Sharing Authority: Oral History in the Classroom

This half-day pre-conference workshop, co-led by Jen Cramer and Jennifer Baumgartner builds upon a previous mini-workshop presented at the Oral History Association in 2024. This longer format will provide hands-on opportunities to guide attendees through the process of incorporating oral history pedagogy into university coursework. Beginning with an introduction to oral history pedagogy with an emphasis on sharing authority, this workshop will explore: strategies around lining up partnerships and logistics for successful interviews; mitigating potential trauma; teaching students initial foundational information about the field; preparing and conducting interviews; creating archivable materials; and using these primary sources. Ideally, incorporating oral history into the classroom provides pathways for students to practice critical thinking, writing, and production and to hone communication skills and intercultural competencies. Following an initial introduction and sharing of context and project specifics, this interactive workshop will lead attendees through the steps involved in embedding oral history into an academic course, including considerations of syllabi and grading rubrics. Suitable for teachers in secondary and university settings, as well as others who work to train oral historians in community settings, practical and helpful strategies will be shared as well as discussions about contemporary tools and offerings that can increase the efficacy and accuracy of the work. It would be helpful if participants are already familiar with the basics of oral history best practices.”

Jen Cramer is the Director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History and has overseen all oral history projects for the LSU Libraries and manages an oral history collection of over 6,000 interviews with topics on Louisiana politics, culture, military, the environmental movement, civil rights, women’s history, and coastal changes. Partnering with researchers, faculty, staff, and community groups, Cramer helps facilitate new and ongoing projects each year throughout the state. Cramer’s particular research interests include veterans’ history, the dynamics of community collaboration, and the intersection of trauma and oral history. For the LSU Ogden Honors College, Cramer teaches a seminar on Oral History and the Louisiana Veteran Experience. She served as the Media Review Editor for The Oral History Review from 2010-2018, and as a council member for OHA from 2016-2020, where she has been a member since 2000. She serves on several university and community committees.

Jennifer Baumgartner, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Education at Louisiana State University. She teaches in the PK-3 teacher certification program and early childhood education graduate program. Her research explores stress among teachers and children in early care settings and she is the creator of the Louisiana Early Childhood Teacher Oral History Project which collaborates with LSU’s T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History to collect, document, and archive the life stories of EC teachers in Louisiana. Her work is published in several journals, including the Journal of Health Psychology, Early Child Development and Care, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, and Young Children. She has experience directing early child development laboratory schools and teaches critical perspectives in early childhood education, child development, and stress in education courses.

Mic, Memory, and Method: Essentials for Your Oral History Project with Adrienne Cain Darough

Designed for newcomers but open to all, the session will explore key aspects of the oral history process—from project design and equipment selection to effective interviewing techniques, legal and ethical considerations, and managing an oral history project. Participants will also learn about post-interview workflows such as transcription, archiving, and sharing oral histories with wider audiences. By the end of the workshop, attendees will have a clearer understanding of how to plan and conduct meaningful oral history projects that honor the voices and experiences of their narrators. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to strengthen your foundation, this interactive workshop will offer a comprehensive introduction to the essentials of oral history.

Adrienne A. Cain Darough is a librarian, oral historian, and certified archivist who currently serves as a clinical associate professor and the assistant director of the Institute for Oral History at Baylor University. In this role, she supports the Institute by providing training and workshops to community groups, students, educators, and researchers who desire to create an oral history project for their neighborhoods, classrooms, communities, and research. As another part of her role, she serves the oral history profession as the secretary-treasurer for the Texas Oral History Association. She has held memberships in the Oral History Association, Texas Library Association, Society of Southwest Archivists, Society of American Archivists, and the Academy of Certified Archivists.

As an oral historian, she has worked on several projects in the role of a trainer, creator, and consultant.  She has presented her work and research on oral history use and methodology at several regional, national, and international conferences. Her oral history projects, research, and interests center around ethical and legal considerations for oral history as well as the Black/African American experience as told through oral histories. In addition, she recently contributed two chapters to the co-authored Oral History at a Distance, written by the staff at the Institute for Oral History.

Wednesday, October 15 @ 1:30 – 5:30 pm

Applying Neuro-Affirming Practices in Oral History

The Autistic Voices Oral History Project (tAVOHP) records, preserves, and shares the lived experiences of Autistic individuals, centering voices historically excluded from dominant narratives—such as Black, Brown, and Indigenous Autistic people; non-speaking and minimally speaking individuals; trans and non-binary people; Autistic women; and Autistic elders. This project documents these perspectives and advances oral history methodologies by integrating cross-neurotype communication strategies and neuro-affirming practices that address the Double Empathy Problem and challenge traditional assumptions about communication, processing, and storytelling. tAVOHP applies Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) principles to ensure oral history projects are authentically shaped by the community they aim to document and serve. This workshop will share the practices co-developed by tAVOHP and their IMLS-funded community fellows and equip oral history practitioners with practical tools for fostering neuro-affirming oral history practices, including:Cross-neurotype communication strategies to bridge gaps between Autistic and non-Autistic practitioners and narrators.Techniques for creating sensory-friendly environments and offering alternative communication methods during interviews.Developing Autistic and disability cultural competencies to build trust and rapport with neurodivergent narrators.Integrating Universal Design principles into oral history frameworks to ensure accessibility from recruitment to post-interview follow-up.Attendees will engage with interview excerpts, interactive discussions, and real-world examples from tAVOHP. Participants will leave with actionable strategies to make their oral history work more inclusive, ensuring it honors diverse ways of thinking, communicating, and storytelling while challenging systemic exclusions in how histories are recorded and shared.This workshop is a condensed version of the IMLS-funded tAVOHP Fellowship Workshop taking place March 2025.

Casey Davis is an archivist, educator, and memory worker. Casey is the Founder and Co-Lead of the Autistic Voices Oral History Project (tAVOHP), which preserves and amplifies the personal stories of Autistic people through recorded interviews. Supported by an IMLS grant, tAVOHP partners with AMIA and the Association for Autism and Neurodiversity (AANE) to ensure long-term preservation and accessibility of these narratives. The grant funds oral history fellowships for Autistic community members and oral history practitioners, including training on applying neuro-affirming practices. Casey is an Adjunct Professor at Louisiana State University’s School of Information Studies, teaching graduate courses in archives and audiovisual preservation; she also works as Senior Development Manager for OpenArchive, an organization centering human rights to co-create intuitive, decentralized, privacy-first, archiving tools and educational resources to protect our histories.As the Adult Program Director at Autism Tennessee, Casey develops programs for the Autistic community in Middle Tennessee. They manage grants to enhance Autistic inclusion in public libraries and expand public understanding of Autistic culture. Casey facilitates ASAN-affiliate Autistic community groups and lead the EmployME program for Autistic jobseekers while training employers on inclusive hiring practices. Previously, Casey was Associate Director of GBH Archives and Project Manager of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. They also led the Chimney Tops II Wildfires Oral History Project at the University of Tennessee and served on the AMIA Board of Directors, co-chairing committees on accessibility, oral history, and copyright.

Sam Fleishman (they/them) is a writer, researcher, and multimedia artist with a focus on disability advocacy and documentary storytelling. Sam is project manager for the Autistic Voices Oral History Project. After being professionally identified as Autistic at 24, they began a deep educational pursuit of neurodiversity and disability studies. Currently, Sam is the Training Coordinator at Massachusetts Advocates Standing Strong, a state-wide, self-advocacy organization founded and operated by individuals with cognitive and developmental disabilities. They educate individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities on disability justice and self-advocacy, and work with companies to evaluate and improve their accessibility practices. Sam also teaches accessible theater to youth with disabilities, integrating their lived Autistic experiences with professional expertise and performance training. Previously, they worked in clinical research at the MGH Lurie Center for Autism. They have significant experience in communications, autism research, project management and design, with a specific interest in healthcare advancement and accessibility.

The Outreach Spectrum: Community Engagement and Oral History

Union stewards discussing a wildcat strike. A state commission assigned to “look into” community concerns. Both are community engagement. Both could use oral history to advance their mission. How do we decide where to be on this spectrum. Using interactive, popular education exercises, attendees will discuss definitions of community, leadership, intermediary, and other concepts to aid in planning a community engagement strategy.

Daniel Horowitz is a historian based in Atlanta, Georgia. His work lives at the intersection of oral history and popular education and is dedicated to helping communities organize and win. He has 20 years’ experience working on labor, environmental, criminal justice, and anti-poverty issues at the local, state, regional, and national level. He was regional manager for StoryCorps in Atlanta for 10 years. Presently, he is a program manager for public history and participatory design at Highlander Research and Education Center.

All about Audio Recording

Significant innovations in digital audio recording have occurred in the past few years, and several new microphones and recorders are now available. The introduction of 32-bit float recording is a potential game changer in oral history’s recording, access, and preservation dimensions. This workshop functions as a general introduction to current and next-generation microphones and portable audio recording options for practicing oral historians. It will include an introduction to the underlying concepts of digital audio, a comprehensive look at current recording “”best practices,”” a practical walkthrough of several of the latest recorders and microphones on the market, and a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of each. Additionally, equipment recommended for the purposes of conducting distanced oral histories will be covered, with an emphasis on products that can be utilized for both in-person and remote environments. Our goal for this workshop is that participants walk away with a clear understanding of the current landscape of professional audio recording and are able to wisely budget for new additions to their interview setups.”

Steven Sielaff is Senior Editor & Collections Manager at the Baylor University Institute for Oral History in Waco, Texas, where he holds the faculty rank of Associate Clinical Professor. In his supervisory role at the Institute he oversees every technical aspect of processing, preserving, and disseminating Baylor’s oral history collection of over 7500 interviews. Steven has co-authored many Oral History Association (OHA) best practices documents and is lead author of Oral History at a Distance, published for the Practicing Oral History series by Routledge Press in 2024. In 2023 he launched the Texas Oral History Locator Database (TOLD) to identify and promote the oral history collections of Texas. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Oral History Association’s annual journal, Sound Historian, Managing Editor for the H-OralHist listserv, and Associate Director of OHA, whose institutional headquarters is currently housed at Baylor University. In 2024 he conceptualized and co-chaired OHA’s first official summer symposium, AI In OH: How New and Evolving Technologies Will Impact the Profession.

Doug Boyd Ph.D. serves as the Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries, and is a recent president of the Oral History Association. Boyd envisioned, designed and implemented the open source and free OHMS system, which synchronizes text with audio and video online. In 2019 Boyd received a Fulbright Scholars Research Grant to collaborate with the National Library of Australia on innovative access to online oral history. Boyd is the co-editor (with Mary A. Larson) of the book Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and Engagement published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2014, and he is the author of the book Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community which was published in August 2011 by the University Press of Kentucky. He authors the blog Digital Omnium: Oral History, Archives, and Digital Technology and is the author of numerous articles pertaining to oral history, archives and digital technologies.

Tours

All tours will be capped at 25 registrations.

Wednesday, October 15 @ 3 – 5 pm

Mid-Century Women of Midtown Walking Tour ($20)

The twentieth century brought change to Atlanta and to the lives of the women who lived and worked here. On a Midtown walk we will consider how the area transformed from rural homes to an urban center. In the experiences of club women working to improve their communities and in stories of lives transformed by World War II, the stories of women of Midtown echo the changes experienced many Americans. Midtown resident Margaret Mitchell created an iconic picture of the Southern woman in her heroine, Scarlett. The women of midtown -from flappers to hippies – lived complex and fascinating lives. Join us as we explore the neighborhood, using oral histories and more to consider twentieth century history.

Thursday, October 16 @ 3 – 5 pm

Ponce City Market and the Beltline Walking Tour ($25)

Join us to explore one of Atlanta’s most popular destinations – an area where Atlantans have come to play for more than one hundred years. From the discovery of “Ponce de Leon Springs” in the 1870s to the twenty-first century renovation of the historic Sears building, Atlantans have been drawn to this this stretch of the iconic street that is today simply called “Ponce”. We’ll show you corners of the Sears building, newly built in 1926 to offer Atlantans a grand shopping experience. The walk includes a stroll on the Beltline, the twenty-two mile walking and biking path that circles the city. Hear stories about how Atlanta has grown, using letters and oral histories of real Atlantans. Come with us as we consider 130 years of shopping, playing and relaxing. Bring your memories of the Sears catalog and neighborhood baseball games!

Friday, October 17 @ 10:30 am – 12 pm

Fox Theater Haunted History ($25)

This October, take a special themed tour of Atlanta’s historic Fox Theater, a former movie palace turned performing arts venue located at 660 Peachtree Street in Midtown. The centerpiece of the Fox Theatre Historic District, this theater was originally planned as part of a large Shriners Temple, as evidenced by its Moorish design by architect Olivier J. Vinour.  It first opened in 1929 and now stands as Atlanta’s only remaining movie palace. Your tour will take you through time to Ancient Egypt and the Middle East while learning about the history of the Shriner Organization and movie mogul William Fox. See why the city of Atlanta cried out to “Save the Fox!” from the wrecking ball in the 1970s and fall in love with the theatre under a canopy of stars. On this hour-long tour, you’ll learn not only about the theater’s stunning architecture but also about all its ghosts as well.

Friday, October 17 @ 3 – 5 pm

Sweet Auburn Neighborhood Walking Tour ($25)

We’ll walk Auburn Avenue to see the long history of Black Atlantans seeking jobs, new lives and civil rights. We will begin outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church and walk through the residential area of this historic neighborhood, sharing stories of those who lived and worked here. This is a neighborhood that attracted migrants to Atlanta right after Emancipation as they sought education and new opportunities. Exploring the childhood neighborhood of Dr. Martin Luther King, we will tell stories of churches, schools and the neighbors who helped shape him. We can consider what “affordable housing” looked like in 1900 and how residential areas transitioned from “salt and pepper” segregation to rigid segregation.  The story of this community is the story of Atlanta’s growth and the long journey of the Civil Rights Movement.

Saturday, October 18 @ 10 am – 12:30 pm

Cliff Kuhn’s Atlanta by Bike ($50)

The cycling tour is open to cyclists of all abilities and will explore different areas of Atlanta, including the Sweet Auburn Neighborhood. This leisurely ride will include stops with opportunities to visit the The Madame CJ Walker and WERD Museum and to purchase some lunch or snacks at Your Vitamin Lady.

This tour highlights and honors the work of Cliff Kuhn, former OHA Executive Director and groundbreaking Atlanta historian and oral historian. 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of Cliff Kuhn’s passing. This tour will be led by Nedra Deadwyler, who holds a Masters of Heritage Preservation from Georgia State University, and she incorporates Cliff’s research into her public history work. Nedra guides equitable processes to bring community voices into defining and shaping places and the story of place. She is a social worker, cultural preservationist, and creative.

Major Sessions

Wednesday, October 15
Screening @ 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Panel @ 8:30 – 9:30 pm

The Harvest | Plenary Session

Following a screening of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Blackmon’s documentary, “The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi’s Schools,” this plenary session will take a look at the history of America’s education system and its ongoing implications for the nation. Moderated by Dr. Charles Bolton, History Professor at UNC Greensboro and author of The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980, panelists will use Mississippi as a microcosm for the legal and political issues still impacting the entire nation. In conversation with filmmaker Doug Blackmon, will be Associate Director of the Humanities Institute and Associate Professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, Dr. Curtis Austin and activist turned Mississippi civil rights and human rights attorney, Jaribu Hill.

Dr. Charles C. Bolton is Professor of History and former Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, where he has also served as Head of the Department of History. He previously taught at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he served as chair of the Department of History and director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Bolton is also the recipient of major grants from the Mississippi Humanities Council, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Education. He is the author of many books on Southern history, including Home Front Battles: World War II Mobilization and Race in the Deep South, Poor Whites of the Antebellum South, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980, and William F. Winter and the New Mississippi. Bolton’s work has also appeared in the Journal of Southern History, Journal of Mississippi History, and Mississippi Folklife.

Douglas A. Blackmon is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, scholar, teacher and filmmaker. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction Book in 2009. He was a finalist for another Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for coverage in the Wall Street Journal of the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and a member of the Journal staff awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Blackmon is Professor of Practice in Georgia State University’s Creative Media Industries Institute.

His first film, based on Slavery by Another Name, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012, attracted more than five million viewers in its first broadcasts on PBS, and has been rebroadcast thousands of times since then. He is the co-author, with former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., of the book, Pursuing Justice, (2020), and director of The Harvest, a PBS film exploring the contradictory outcomes of America’s effort to racially integrate public schools over the past 50 years.  He was a member of the faculty and a senior fellow in presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, and host of American Forum, a 30-minute television interview program seen on more than 250 public television stations across the U.S.

Blackmon has written extensively over the past 25 years about the American quandary of race — exploring the integration of schools during his childhood in a Mississippi Delta farm town, lost episodes of the Civil Rights movement, and, repeatedly, the dilemma of how contemporary societies grapples with a troubled past.  Many of his stories in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct, the American judicial system, and racial segregation. International assignments have included the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the reunification of East and West Germany, the Civil War in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, post apartheid South Africa and the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal at the Hague.  Political assignments included the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2008, presidential campaigns in 1988, 2002, 2008, 2012, and 2016, the post presidency of Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton as governor of Arkansas.

Between 2012 and 2018, Blackmon produced and hosted more than 250 episodes of American Forum, a weekly program featuring interviews with national leaders, policy makers, top journalists and leading historians and political scientists. The program aired coast-to-cost on U.S. public television channels, across much of Canada, and reached millions of viewers through pioneering used of Facebook Live social media. Its goal was to engage the nation’s greatest and most influential minds in serious and civil discussions about the nation’s most pressing issues.
Prior to the University of Virginia, Blackmon was the longtime chief of the Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta bureau and the paper’s Senior National Correspondent. Blackmon has written about or directed coverage of some of the most pivotal stories in recent American life, including the election of President Barack Obama, the rise of the Tea Party movement and the BP oil spill.  For more than a decade, he oversaw coverage of 11 southeastern states for the Wall Street Journal, including directing the Journal’s acclaimed coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the failed federal response after that disaster, the Journal’s investigation into the training and preparations of the 9/11 hijackers in Florida, as well as immigration, poverty, politics and daily reporting on more than 2,000 corporations based in the region.

Jaribu Hill is a Civil and Human Rights Attorney. She is Founder and Executive Director of the Mississippi  Workers’ Center for Human Rights. Hill is an author and an international spokesperson on Civil and Human  Rights topics. In support of the human rights struggles of workers across the globe, Jaribu has traveled to  Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. Through her organization, Attorney Hill has provided legal  representation and advocacy for hundreds of workers in the state. Her efforts have led to the adoption of  “Zero Tolerance Against Hate” policies being implemented in workplaces across the state. Hill also won an  important judgment against the Ku Klux Klan in Pelion, South Carolina and has assisted Mississippi Delta  parents in their fight for school equity. Hill is the recipient of the coveted “Gloria” Award, named for Gloria  Steinem. She is a Skadden Fellow and the recipient of the R. Jess Brown, the highest award given to a 

Mississippi Lawyer by the Magnolia Bar Association. Jaribu was legal observer and cultural artist during the  Women in War Crimes Tribunal, held in Tokyo in December 2000 and the author of the poem, Haunting  Mirrors, written to honor Comfort Women and other victims of sexual slavery. Excerpts from this poem  were made part of the important judgment rendered during the Tribunal.  

Attorney Hill is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court, serves as a Special Master in Washington County’s Chancery Court and is a former Municipal Judge for the City of Hollandale. She has written numerous articles and is published in law reviews and journals, including Southern University Law Review, Columbia University Black Law Journal, and Columbia University Law Review. She is the author of Knowledge is Power—A Know Your Rights Manual and co-author of The Black College Guide. Hill has appeared on various TV and Radio programs, including TV One’s acclaimed series: Murder in Black and White. Attorney Hill serves on Mississippi’s Access to Justice Commission and hosts “Talking Rights With Jaribu”, a weekly radio program on WDSV 91.9 FM.

Dr. Curtis Austin is an Associate Professor in the School of Philosophical Historical and Religious Studies. He studies African American history with a focus on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, his first book, Up Against the Wall, examines the history of the Black Panther Party. Austin recently completed a second book entitled “Dare to Struggle: A History of the Black Power Movement.” He is currently writing “Dare to Win: A History of the San Francisco 8.”  The SF8 were former members of the Black Panther Party arrested in 2007 for the 1971 homicide of a San Francisco police officer. Having jailed the men in 2005 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury, state and federal authorities, in a coordinated nationwide effort in 2007, re-arrested the eight men and held them on bonds totaling more than thirteen million dollars. “Dare to Win” examines the motivations behind their arrests and the history of the men’s involvement in the Black Panther Party and its underground apparatus the Black Liberation Army. It also illuminates the years of community organizing by those who supported their efforts to remain free. In 2011, the SF8 won its legal battle when the courts dismissed all charges.

From 2017-2020, Austin served as Associate Professor of History and founding Director of the Black Studies Program at the University of Oregon. Previously (2000-2007), he had been Director of the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage at the University of Southern Mississippi and founding Director of USM’s Center for Black Studies (2007 to 2011). While serving as an associate professor in The Ohio State University’s Department of African and African American Studies, Austin won the Award for Outstanding Service In The Promotion of Social Responsibility and the C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award.

Thursday, October 16 @ 10:30 am – 12 pm

What does this moment require?: the relationship of oral history to organizing | Plenary Session

What does this moment require? This plenary is an invitation and challenge to oral history practitioners to consider oral history as an organizing tool to challenge authoritarianism. Dominant narratives demand forgetting; and the story of struggle, particularly of marginalized people, is the first to be memory holed. Panelists will discuss and pose questions about the role of oral history in building collective power. (OHMA will sponsor)

Dartricia Rollins is the Visiting Librarian for Oral History in the Rose Library at Emory University and co-founder of Georgia Dusk: a southern liberation oral history. She is an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace and the Jericho Movement and co-host of Revolutionary African Perspectives on WRFG 89.3 and the Groundings Podcast.

Ashby Combahee (s/he/they) is the Library and Archives Manager at the Highlander Research and Education Center. A flagship program of the Library & Archives is the Southern Memory Workers Institute, a popular education community archives training. Ashby is co-founder of Georgia Dusk: a southern liberation oral history which is a community archive that documents and preserves grassroots organizing by Black feminist and queer community members.

Zoharah Simmons

Daniel Horowitz is a historian specializing in oral history and based in Atlanta, Georgia. For the last 15 years he has been using history and historical research to help community organizations. He has 20 years’ experience as an organizer for labor, environmental, criminal justice, and anti-poverty issues. Presently, he is the program manager for public history and participatory design for the Highlander Research and Education Center.

Friday, October 17 @ 7 – 9 pm

Bettina Love | Keynote

Dr. Bettina L. Love holds the esteemed William F. Russell Professorship at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is the acclaimed author of Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal, a New York Times bestseller. This groundbreaking work led to her being awarded the prestigious Stowe Prize for Literary Activism and being named a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Recognized as one of the Next 50 Leaders by the Kennedy Center in 2022 for her dedication to fostering inspiration, inclusivity, and compassion, Dr. Love’s impact extends far beyond academia. In 2024, she was honored with the Truth Award for Excellence in Education from Better Brothers Los Angeles and The Diva Foundation.

Dr. Love actively contributes to nurturing and empowering educators and parents committed to combating injustice within their educational institutions and communities. Additionally, Dr. Love was instrumental in founding the Task Force behind the groundbreaking “In Her Hands” program, which disbursed more than $13 million to support Black women in Georgia.

Renowned as a highly sought-after public speaker, Dr. Love covers a wide range of compelling topics in her engagements, including abolitionist teaching, anti-racism, Hip Hop education, Black girlhood, queer youth, educational reparations, and the use of art-based education to foster youth civic engagement. Her profound insights and expertise have earned her recognition in various news outlets, including NPR, PBS, The Daily Beast, Time, Education Week, The Guardian, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 2018, the Georgia House of Representatives honored Dr. Love with a resolution for her impactful contributions to the field of education. She is also a prolific writer, contributing articles on race in America to Education Week Opinion. With her bestseller We Want To Do More Than Survive, she has sold close to 200,000 copies, making it a staple in classrooms nationwide and solidifying her as a leading voice in the field of education.