The speakers for this event are Jose Alcaine, Director of Research Services in the Office of Research and Faculty Development, Meredith Sisson, Associate Director in the Honors College National Scholarship Office, and Mary Strawderman, Doctoral Student in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.

The East Marshall Street Well Project works to address some of the exploitative medical practices perpetrated by Virginia Commonwealth University on Richmond’s Black communities since the 1800s. Representatives from the community and VCU will contextualize this history and discuss efforts to create oral history and memorialization projects that work toward reparative justice. Please join us during Black History Month to reflect upon important local Black history in the making. 

Christopher Brooks is Professor of Anthropology in the School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and author of Dual Pandemics: HIV and the Coronavirus in Several Kenyan Communities.

Damien Smith Pfister, PhD, is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park, Director of the Design Cultures + Creativity program, and co-editor of the University of Alabama book series “Rhetoric + Digitality.” Caddie Alford, PhD is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The speakers for this event are Karen Kopryanski, Associate Professor and Head of Voice and Speech in the Department of Theatre at VCUarts, and Baron Kelly, the Marilynn R. Baxter Professor of Theatre and Drama and Vilas Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Rachel Gevlin is a Teaching Assistant Professor of English as well as Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. She specializes in the literature and culture of England’s long eighteenth century, with a particular focus on the history of the novel, women writers, and legal histories of marriage and divorce. 

Daniel Morales is an Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University specializing in Latino, immigration, and public history. He is from Azusa California and earned his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University in 2016, and B.A. at the University of Chicago in 2008. His research focuses on the social and economic history of migration between Latin America and the United States.

Dr. KáLyn Coghill (they/them) is a Black, fat, neurodivergent, non-binary femme. They are an award-winning educator, practitioner, and activist with expertise spanning abortion doula work, community organizing, poetry, and interdisciplinary scholarship. They serve as the Director of Digital Engagement at me too. International and as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Hala Auji is an Associate Professor of Art History and the Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the co-author of The Arab Nahda as Popular Entertainment: Mass Culture and Modernity in the Middle East.

Samaneh Olad Ghadikolaei, Ph.D is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the author of Women, Faith, and Family: Reclaiming Gender Justice through Religious Activism.

Rebecca Gibson is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Anthropology in the School of World Studies at VCU. Dr. Gibson's research spans a multitude of topics, from historical biological anthropology, to whether or not zombies have gender, to cyborgs and robotic technology.

Margaret Hu is the Taylor Reveley Research Professor and Professor of Law, and Director of the Digital Democracy Lab, at William & Mary (W&M) Law School. Her research focuses on the intersection of civil rights, national security, cybersurveillance, and AI.