About

I am a specialist in the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin American, and Afro-Latinx communities in the U.S.

I am deeply committed to creating opportunities that support racial and gender equity through teaching, research, and educational programming.

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Dr. Michele Reid-Vazquez

Dr. Reid-Vazquez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research and teaching specializations are the African Diaspora in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Atlantic World, and Afro-Latinx History in the U.S., with an emphasis on slavery and freedom, race and gender relations, politics, migration, identity, and digital humanities. In addition, she holds the following leadership positions at the University of Pittsburgh:

She was appointed the Founding Director of the Center for Ethnic Studies Research (CESR) in 2021. The mission of CESR is to advance rigorous, innovative, multidisciplinary, and collaborative research to offer local, regional, national, comparative, and transnational perspectives that address the histories, experiences, and current issues in the following U.S.-based ethnic communities of color: Latinx, Asian American, Native American, and African American/Black diasporas.

She also created and directs the Afrolatinidad Studies Initiative. This project seeks to expand transnational, transregional, and interdisciplinary research, education, and programming in the global arenas of Afro-Latin American Afro-Latinx studies. Core projects include the “Transnational Dialogues in Afrolatinidad” webinar series and the Dialogues in Afrolatinidad podcast.

Along with her book, The Year of the Lash: Free People of Color in Cuba and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (2011), she has published numerous articles in a variety of edited volumes and journals, and presents regularly at national and international conferences. Current projects explore the Caribbean in the age of revolution, family history and memory in Haiti, Cuba and South Carolina, and Afro-Latinx communities in the Rust Belt region.

As a specialist of the African Diaspora in Latin American and Afro-Latinx studies, and as a woman of African descent, she has a deep engagement with the histories of minoritized populations. These multiple contexts have fueled her sense of responsibility to create environments that support racial and gender equity through mentoring, teaching, research, and educational programming.