Barbara Ransby

Barbara Ransby is an historian, writer and longtime activist. She is a Professor of African American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where she directs the campus-wide Social Justice Initiative. She previously served as Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program and Interim Vice Provost for Planning and Programs (2011 -2012) at UIC.  Prof. Ransby is author of Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Yale University Press, January 2013) and the highly acclaimed biography, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, which received eight national awards and recognitions including: Lillian Smith Book Award, Southern Regional Council; Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, American Historical Association; Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Prize, Association of Black Women Historians; Liberty Legacy Foundation Award (co-winner), Organization of American Historians; James A. Rawley Prize, Organization of American Historians; Honorable Mention, 2004 Berkshire Conference First Book Prize, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians; Honor Book, Black Caucus of the American Library Association; Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. Prof. Ransby is also the second Editor-in-Chief of Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, and serves on the editorial board of the London-based journal, Race and Class. She is currently PI on an Andrew Mellon Foundation Sawyer seminar project entitled “Geographies of Justice.” She is also working on a book on the Black Lives Matter movement, placing it in a larger historical context. The book will be published later this year by University of California Press.

AFFILIATION: University of Illinois, Chicago