Conference Speakers

Below is the list of our selected speakers. Please note this is not the full list of speakers, as PUCPR invited 12 speakers as well. Additional speaker information can be found at PUCPR's event page here. 

Dr. Charmaine Crawford is an Associate Professor in Africana Studies at Kent State University. She is also the departmental Director of Institute for African American Affairs (IAAA). As an anti-racist feminist scholar and activist, she has fought for the rights of women, People of African Descent and LGBTQ persons in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean. Some of her publications include, Teaching Black Canada(s) Across Borders: Insights from the Caribbean and United States, Unbearable Knowledge: Sexual Citizenship, Homophobia and the Taxonomy of Ignorance in the Caribbean, and Decolonizing Reproductive Labour: Caribbean Women, Migration and Domestic Work in the Global Economy.

Dr. Crawford will be presenting with Tennisha A. Morris.

Zoyah Kinkead-Clark, Ed.D., is a Senior Lecturer and researcher in early childhood education at The University of the West Indies, Mona. She is also the Coordinator of graduate programmes in the School of Education. As a researcher she has a keen interest in teacher professional development and understanding quality practices in early childhood settings. She is currently examining community initiated approaches to Early Childhood development in select countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Lisa Krajecki is the Assistant Professor/Scholarly Communications Librarian at Tennessee State University. She started working at Tennessee State University in May 2023. She has master’s degrees in Library and Information Science, Children’s Literature, and Public Anthropology. Most of her family lives in Chicago (her mother is a stand-up comic who went to Second City). She's lived in Aurora IL, Chicago IL, Lynchburg VA, Silver Spring MD, and now Nashville TN. She is interested in learning about intersections between disability and gender, race, and class. Lisa is especially passionate about studying Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs).

Armin Langer is a DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor at the Center for European Studies and affiliate at the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Prior to joining UF, he was a Visiting Research Scholar at Brandeis University and a Transatlantic Partnership on Memory & Democracy Fellow at the University of Virginia. His research interests are migration, identity politics and populism in Europe and the Americas. Armin holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the Humboldt University of Berlin. He also studied philosophy and Jewish studies in Budapest, Jerusalem, Potsdam, and Washington, D.C., and was ordained as a rabbi by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia.

Babacar M’Baye currently serves as Chair and Professor in the Department of English at Kent State University. He has previously taught at Evergreen State College and Bowling Green State College. He received his Ph.D. in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University, his M.A. in American Studies from Pennsylvania State University, and his Maîtrise in English from Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis. He has written the books Black Cosmopolitanism and Anticolonialism: Pivotal Moments (London & New York: Routledge, 2017) and The Trickster Comes West: Pan-African Influence in Early Black Diasporan Narratives (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009). His research interests include African American, African, and Caribbean literatures and cultures; slavery, racism, imperialism, colonialism, and postcolonialism; theories of Black Atlantic studies, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism; and Black popular cultures with a focus on film, music, sexualities, and gender identities.

Mwatabu S. Okantah holds the BA in English and African Studies from Kent State University (1976) and the MA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York (1982).  A Professor and Chair in the Department of Africana Studies at Kent State University, he also serves as Director of the Ghana Study Abroad Program.  He has taught at Union College, The Livingston College of Rutgers University, Cleveland State University and Lakeland Community College.

Okantah is the author of Guerrilla Dread: Poetry for the Heart and Minds (2019), Cheikh Anta Diop: Poem for the Living—a limited trilingual edition in English, French and Wolof (2017/1997), Muntu Kuntu Energy: New and Selected Poetry (2013), Reconnecting Memories: Dreams No Longer Deferred (2004), Legacy: for Martin and Malcolm (1987), Collage (1984) and Afreeka Brass (1983).  Work has been anthologized in A Poem Demic (2022), Speak A Powerful Magic (2019), In the Company of Russell Atkins (2016), Gwendolyn Brooks and Working Writers (2007), The Second Set, Vol. II (1996) and Soul Looks Back in Wonder (1994).  A new work, The View from Stono: Reflections, Reminiscences and Ruminations, is forthcoming.

Linda Piccirillo-Smith has been an English instructor in the Department of Pan-African Studies since the late 1990’s. She has taught both English and French at the university and has a dual M.A. in English and French from Kent State. She began her undergraduate studies at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. In addition to her teaching assignment, she is the communication skills and arts coordinator for English and Pan-African Studies, the supervisor of the computer lab in Oscar Ritchie and offers regular tutoring sessions in the lab. She has received the Outstanding Teaching Award and the Diversity in Teaching Award. Her current research area is in Caribbean studies and literature. She also leads student travel abroad to the Caribbean.  

Marinică Tiberiu Șchiopu is a Romanian language lecturer at The Institute of Romanian Language (Bucharest, Romania) and he teaches Romanian language, literature and civilization at Delhi University (New Delhi, India). He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and he took part in scientific events (in-person and online) in Romania, USA, UK, Turkey and India. His academic interests include Climate Fiction, Comparative Studies, Cultural Memory, Ecocriticism, Geocriticism, Interculturality, Intertextuality and Oriental Studies.