Qiaira Riley is a Philadelphia-based interdisciplinary artist, educator and cultural worker whose socially engaged practice includes exhibitions, residencies and collaborations with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, Mural Arts and Monument Lab. An African American Public Humanities Initiative Scholar, she co-founded the collective 2.0 and hosts the Black art history podcast "Something You Can Feel."

Britney Henry earned her Master’s in English Literature from Auburn University in 2020, where she worked in Ralph Draughon Library Special Collections and Archives and curated The Wade Hall 20th Century Paperback Collection exhibit and digital collection. She was a Rare Book School NEH-GBHI scholarship recipient in 2019. In her research, Britney is concerned with characters’ relationship to the body and identity individually, but also societally when disability, trauma and/or exploitation occurs.

Brit Henry successfully defended her Doctoral Dissertation Summer of 2025.

Mikayla Harden has a master’s degree in history from the University of Delaware and a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She is interested in studying gender, race, medicine and law, centering on the experience of Black children and the Black Atlantic world. Mikayla studies computer languages, such as Python, and graphic design to curate digital humanities projects. Mikayla also volunteered at the Lyndon Baines John Presidential Library as a greeter and archivist. In spring 2021, Mikayla participated in the virtual Mellon Scholar Internship for the Library Company of Philadelphia. Mikayla is an avid tennis player and enjoys watching soccer.

TK Smith is a Philadelphia-based curator, writer and cultural historian. Smith co-curated the 2021 Atlanta Biennial at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of American Civilization program at the University of Delaware, where he researches art, material culture and the built environment. He received his M.A. in American Studies and his B.A. in English and African American Studies from Saint Louis University. His writing has been published in ART PAPERS, Burnaway, and in the Monument Lab Bulletin.

Darbyshire Witek is a Ph.D. student of English with research interests in racialized identities, public memory, commemorative history and national futurities in nineteenth century literary and material culture. Darby is also pursuing a certificate in Museum Studies. She has a master’s in English literature from Auburn University and a Bachelor’s in English literature and history with a minor in Spanish from Georgia College, where she was nationally recognized as a Gilder-Lehrman History Scholar. Darby has worked with projects such as the Colored Conventions Project and 18th Century Connect.

Darbyshire successfully defended her Doctoral Dissertation Summer of 2026.

Kelli Racine Barnes is a historian of 18th- and 19th-century U.S. history, Black American girlhood, transatlantic material culture, and interpretive exhibit design. She earned her Ph.D. in History and a graduate certificate in Museum Studies from UD. Her research explores the experiences of Black Americans, the knowledge they carried across the Atlantic during enslavement, and the power of objects to tell those stories. At UD, she developed digital humanities expertise through work with the award-winning Colored Conventions Project and curated the digital exhibit "Segregated Sands: Delaware’s Segregated Beaches During the Jim Crow Era," featured by the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs.

Kelli successfully defended her Doctoral Dissertation Spring 2024.

Mali Collins, Ph.D., is a doula and assistant professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at American University. Mali’s research interests include Black motherhood studies, Black archival studies, 20th and 21st century literature and art, medical humanities, digital technology and reproductive health and justice. She has a Ph.D. in English from UD, an M.A. in Culture and Theory from the University of California, Irvine, and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Scrap Theory: Reproductive Injustice in the Black Feminist Imagination (OSU Press, 2026).

Denise Burgher is a senior team member with the Colored Conventions Project, affiliated with the Center for Black Digital Research at the Pennsylvania State University. As the director of community and curricular engagement, Denise leads initiatives to document the history of 19th century Black organizing such as Colored Conventions. She also led the development of an online CCP curriculum for implementation in Philadelphia high schools. Denise is a Ph.D. student of English at UD. Her work examines literature written by Afro-Protestant African diaspora women in North America engaging issues of agency, mobility, theology, race, gender and class.