Honorary Doctorates

Robin D. G. Kelley

Dr. Kelley is a Distinguished Professor and the Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in US History at the University of California, Lost Angeles. His work is dedicated to African American history and culture, with particular emphasis on radical social movements and the political dynamics at work within African American culture, including in jazz, hip-hop, and the visual arts. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received many awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 and the UCLA Freedom Scholar Award in 2021. In 2009, Dr. Kelley broke ground by serving as the first ever African-American historian to be the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. He has also taught at the University of South California, Columbia, NYU, Southeastern Massachusetts University, Emory, and the University of Michigan. Dr Kelley is also a prolific author and essayist. He finds the stories of resistance that deserve remembering and he is, at his core, a consummate storyteller. Through this important work, he is helping to re-envision racial hierarchies, self-identities, and the ways in which Whiteness and Blackness have been experienced throughout history and in today’s culture.