Black Ecologies Atlas

Dr. Teona Williams

Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography

Teona Williams is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography. Her current work explores the role of disaster and hunger, in shaping Black feminist ecologies from 1930-1990s. Specifically, she follows a cadre of rural Black feminists who articulated visions of food sovereignty, overhauled antiblack disaster relief, and vigorously fought for universal basic income, radical land reform, and food and clean water access as a human right.

Dr. J.T. Roane

Mellon Assistant Professor of Global Racial Justice

J.T. Roane is Mellon Assistant Professor of Global Racial Justice, Africana Studies and Geography, at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Dr. Roane is a historian broadly concerned with matters of geography, sexuality, and religion in relation to Black communities. He is the lead of the Black Ecologies Lab and former co-senior editor of  Black Perspectives he digital platform of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS).;

Dr. Danielle Purifoy

Assistant Professor of Geography

Danielle Purifoy is an assistant professor of Geography and Environment at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also serves as a faculty project lead for the UNC Environmental Justice Action Research Clinic. Danielle is the former Race and Place editor of Scalawag, a media organization devoted to Southern storytelling, journalism, and the arts.

Dr. Justin Hosbey

Assistant Professor of Geography

Dr. Justin Hosbey is a humanistic social scientist and Black studies scholar. His ethnographic work explores Black social and cultural life in the U.S. Gulf Coast and Mississippi Delta regions. His current ethnographic project utilizes research to understand how the post-Katrina privatization of neighborhood schools in low-income and working-class Black communities has fractured space and placemaking in Black New Orleans. 

Dr. Jayson Maurice

Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at University of Maryland

Jayson Maurice Porter is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park and a Voss Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES). He is an environmental historian of Mexico and the Americas, with focuses on agrochemicals, oilseeds, food systems, and Black and Indigenous ecologies. He most recently co-developed the Environmental Justice Freedom School with the Chicago Teachers Union in June 2023