Nemata Blyden

Nemata Blyden (M.Phil., Ph.D. Yale University) is the Armstead Robinson Professor of 19th Century African American History at the Carter G. Woodson Institute, University of Virginia. A scholar specializing in African American, African Diaspora, and African history, Nemata Blyden is the author of African Americans and Africa: A New History (Yale University Press, 2019), and West Indians in West Africa, 1808-1880: A diaspora in reverse (University of Rochester Press, 2000). Most recently she published “Stevie Wonder’s Ghanaian citizenship reflects long-standing links between African Americans and the continent,” for The Conversation (2024). Her principal thematic interests have included nineteenth century African American history, African and American and Caribbean migrations to Africa and African American engagement with Africa.

Nemata's project, A Black Atlantic Family History, interprets and connects histories of Black Atlantic lives by examining the history of two families in the Americas, contextualizing their history within a broader Atlantic history. By looking at the lives of an extended family whose history spans the American South, the Caribbean, Europe and West Africa, it illuminates the history of African descended people from the 18th to the 20th century, exploring major themes in African Diaspora history.