A.J. Donaldson
A.J. Donaldson received B.A.s in History and Political Science, and the M.A. in History, from North Carolina Central University. His interests included African American history, the economy and culture of the American South, and Civil Rights in the 20th Century. He also received a certificate in Political Economy from Hong Kong University sponsored by Georgetown University. He is a Thurgood Marshall Scholar and the recipient of NC Past and Emerging Leaders Award with John Hope Franklin. A.J. is a doctoral student in History at University of Florida. As an AAHP Coordinator at SPOHP, he helped to recruit, conduct, and transcribe interviews for future research on underserved voices.
Anna Jiménez
Anna Jiménez is a second year law student at the Levin College of Law. As a double Gator, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in History and a minor in Environmental Sciences. She is pursuing a career in international environmental law and commercial litigation. Anna joined SPOHP’s staff after completing the oral history internship program in Fall 2012. At SPOHP, Anna works in the Veteran’s History Project and transcribes for the Alachua Country African American History Project as well. As a member of the Florida Moot Court Team, Anna will be competing in March 2016 in the 56th annual Jessup International Law Moot Court contest.
Dr. Justin Dunnavant
Dr. Justin Dunnavant is a Ph.D. student studying Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida. He has worked at SPOHP’s African American History Project (AAHP) since 2012, first as a volunteer and later as a Graduate Coordinator. Justin’s research interests focus generally on the historical archaeology of Africa and the African Diaspora, and more specifically on the archaeology and heritage of Ethiopia. After receiving his B.A.s in History and Anthropology at Howard University in 2009, he completed a Fulbright in Jamaica before continuing his studies at UF. In addition to his academics, Justin is also a founding member of the Society of Black Archaeologists. He has been named a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow for the 2014-2017 academic years.
Michael T. Barry Jr.
Michael T. Barry Jr. is a doctoral student in history at the University of Florida. He studies modern Muslim and African American history, specifically intellectual history, Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, and popular culture. He earned his Bachelor’s in History and Africana Studies from the College of the Holy Cross in 2014 and his Master’s in American and Middle Eastern History from Providence College in 2016.
Michael has worked on multiple documentary film and videography projects including works for acclaimed artists Karen Turner and Shirish Korde. He has also worked in a professional capacity with the National Football League, the New England Patriots, the Buffalo Bills, Providence College, the College of the Holy Cross, and Providence Pictures. Michael has produced two of his own documentary films Sincerity: From X to El-Shabazz (2014) and The Universal Soldier: Vietnam (2016). His films have won numerous awards including the Carter G. Woodson Award (2014) and the Best Feature Award at the 2016 Nyack Film Festival.
Dr. Randi Gill-Sadler
Dr. Randi Gill-Sadler is a Ph.D. Candidate in the English Department and joined SPOHP in Fall 2014 as a Graduate Coordinator. Randi completed her B.A. degree in English at Gardner-Webb University, where she received the Most Outstanding Female Graduate and English Major awards. She received her M.A. degree in English at the University of Florida.
Randi is currently writing her dissertation entitiled “Not Yo’ Daddy’s Empire: African Americans, U.S. Imperialism and Diaspora” which analyzes the material history and cultural representations of African Americans who participated in U.S. imperial exploits in the 19th and 20th century.
During her time at UF, Randi has taught classes for the University Writing Program and the English Department, including a special topics in American literature course about U.S. imperialism and an upper level Black Cultural Studies course, for which she was recently awarded the English Department Teaching Award for 2014-2015.
Dr. Justin Hosbey
Dr. Justin Hosbey is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Florida. He is currently working on his dissertation which is tentatively titled, “Consumption and Conviviality: Delectable Black Death in Post-Katrina New Orleans.” This project uses ethnography and spatial analysis to interrogate the social consequences of the privatization of public schools, highlighting the state’s attempt to fracture Black communities in post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana. He has worked as a graduate coordinator for the African American History Project since 2013.
Justin a Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellow as well as a Florida Educational Fund McKnight Fellow. His dissertation work has been supported by research grants from the Ford Foundation and National Science Foundation (AC-SBE Alliance).
Justin received his B.A. in Anthropology from Georgia State University in 2008 and his M.A. in Applied Anthropology from the University of South Florida in 2011.
Annemarie Nichols
Annemarie Nichols graduated from the University of Florida with B.A.s in English and History. She is currently an M.A. student in Oral History at the University of Florida. She has been a researcher and oral historian with the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program since Summer 2014.
Annemarie has done fieldwork with the Mississippi Freedom Project in the summers of 2014 and 2015, Virginia Fieldwork in Folklore Project in Fall 2014, and the Appalachian Change Project in Spring 2015. She was a 2015-2016 University Scholar while writing an undergraduate thesis analyzing white-on-black political and social violence in Jackson County, Florida, from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. During the summer of 2016, she lived in St. Augustine where she helped to coordinate the St. Augustine History Project in conjunction with the Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center. Thanks to a grant from the UF Historic St. Augustine Inc, the team was able to collect fifty interviews during their time in St. Augustine in order to capture the experiences of African Americans living in St. Augustine before, during, and after the events of the Civil Rights Movement. Currently, Annemarie is crafting an oral history collection surrounding race, place, and belonging in the Florida Panhandle.
Dr. Johanna Mellis
Johanna Mellis worked as a graduate coordinator at SPOHP from the spring 2016-fall 2016 semesters. Working with Raja Rahim, she started the Sports at UF collection as part of the Fall 2016 internship.
Johanna received her BA in History at the College of Charleston in 2008. She came to UF and received her MA degree in Modern European History in 2012, writing her Master’s thesis on retribution and property restitution at the local level in post-WWII Budapest.
Johanna is completed her PhD in the History department. Her dissertation, “Negotiation Through Sport: Navigating Everyday Life in Socialist Hungary,” is a socio-cultural history of elite sport in Hungary from 1948-1989. Her work examines the ways the sport leadership’s priorities and elite sport policies evolved over time, and how athletes responded by asserting their agency within the sphere of material consumption. Her research underscores the varied nature of the socialist sport systems that existed across the Eastern Bloc countries. She is also interested in how the current political and socio-economic climate in Hungary influences how Hungarians remember their collective and individual experiences about the socialist period. Johanna’s research has been supported by grants from the International Institution of Education (Fulbright), the North American Society for Sport History, and the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In addition to her academic interests, Johanna was a college swimmer at the College of Charleston, from 2004-2008. She continues to be involved with swimming at the local level. She was an assistant coach for High Tide Aquatics from 2012-2016, and currently coaches for Gator Swim Club.
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