6. Board Member - Graduate Student

James Blackwell is a Ph.D. candidate in African History at Michigan State University. His dissertation explores the history of Igbo and Ibibio labor migration between southeastern Nigeria and British Southern Cameroon, formally German Kamerun, from 1900 to 1975. By beginning in German Kamerun, he engages not only with the partition of Cameroon between the British and French, but Germany’s reengagement with Cameroon following World War I. He was an editorial assistant for the Journal of West African History, from 2016-2017, and assisted in its international launch. He was awarded the TIAA Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship in 2018, to complete dissertation fieldwork in Nigeria. In addition to his dissertation, he is also an executive producer and historical consultant on a documentary that explores the African Diaspora. As a member of both the GSA and Black Studies Network, he has continued to center questions surrounding German imperialism and its relationship with the African Diaspora.

Kevina King is a PhD student in German and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she earned her Master’s with a focus on Black German history, Black German music, and the Black Diaspora. She is currently working on her dissertation, “Black German Resistance in the Twenty-First Century,” which examines Black German radical thought and artistic expression via digital media, including music and podcasts. Her chapter "Black, PoC, and Migrant Lives Should Matter: Racial Profiling, Police Brutality and Whiteness in Germany," in the 2018 edited volume Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories, edited by Tiffany Florvil and Vanessa Plumly, focuses on racial profiling in Berlin since 2001 and local organizations fighting to mitigate the systemic consequences. She is the project and research assistant at the DEFA Film Library where she coordinates the upcoming DEFA Film Library Summer Film Institute Authority and Alterity in East German Movies: Political Experiments, Rebel Youth and Civil Unrest. At the 2019 GSA, she organized the film screening and the Q&A with DEFA film director and media artist Lutz Dammbeck during the Arts Night. This year will be her fourth year attending the GSA having taken part in GSA panels, seminars, and round tables hosted by the Black Diaspora Studies Network. Besides her engagement at the GSA, she also regularly takes part in panels at the Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA) Conference, the Afroeuropean Network Conference, and at this year’s Women in German Conference. Kevina is co-organizer of the guest-related panel featuring Black German filmmaker, Sheri Hagen. Kevina has been an invited guest speaker at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Elms College, and recently presented “W. E. B. DuBois and His Time in Germany” at The W. E. B. DuBois Center at UMass Amherst.