2026 Conference Presenters

Macie Alford is a junior history major at Virginia Tech and an intern with Monuments Across Appalachian Places (MAAP), where she works with the Raising the Shade project memorializing seventy United States Colored Troops (USCT) from Franklin County, Virginia. Alford is a passionate advocate for rural students; she serves as a student liaison for the Center for Rural Education and a national voice in the conversation on Black rural education. She plans to become a high school history teacher. 

La’Shelle Allen, Contralto, began her professional career as a Soloist with the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble in New York City. Today, Ms. Allen’s career spans more than 30 years performing in 39 countries, countless opera houses, theaters and a variety of event venues. Highlights of Ms. Allen’s work include appearances at St. Peter’s Basilica, Grand Théâtre de Genève, North Sea Jazz Festival de Vienne and Madison Square Garden. Recent engagements include collaborations with Houston Grand Opera, Opera Steamboat, Lyric Opera Chicago, Louisville Orchestra and as a member of The Metropolitan Opera’s Grammy Award–winning cast of Porgy and Bess.

Ms. Allen works not only in Opera but also in Jazz, Blues, Spoken Word, Negro Spirituals, and Roots and Soul. Ms. Allen currently works as Music Producer, Composer and Arranger for Sistah LaLa Productions and serves as Recording Artist & Voice-Over Actress. Ms. Allen’s solo album, Journey To Freedom, showcases original music and arrangements centering the American Negro Spiritual. Ms. Allen is the creator and founder of Spirituals In Motion, a musical project and outreach program that engages song creation focused on the history and example of Traditional American Negro Spirituals. Spirituals In Motion is designed to explore conversations around culture and the contributions of underrepresented voices.

Becky Alley is a Senior Lecturer in Curatorial Studies at the University of Kentucky. She earned her BFA in Printmaking/Drawing from Washington University and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Kansas. Since completing her studies, Becky has worked as a gallery and exhibitions director in both university and non-profit galleries and has taught courses including drawing, professional practices, exhibition practicum, and gallery/curatorial studies. 

Her artwork is process- and materials-focused and often manifests itself in private or intimate performance elements and installations that are never really finished. She explores themes of ritual, memory, empathy, decay, and the sacred. She loves collaboration and, through her creative work, is particularly interested in expanding the roles of self-reflection and meaning in everyday life.

Kit Anderson is the Deputy Director of CivicLex, a non-profit that strengthens civic health in Lexington, Kentucky by helping our community understand and get involved in local issues, connect with their neighbors, and have a say in decision-making. Kit came to CivicLex as an AmeriCorps VISTA and now oversees special projects and internal operations. Kit has been with CivicLex since 2020 and lives in Council District 5.

Jerry Bransford and Family: Jerry Bransford is a retired National Park Service Ranger who served at Mammoth Cave National Park for almost twenty years. He is a fifth-generation Bransford cave guide, and a descendant of Materson and Nicholas Bransford, two of the park’s first enslaved African American guides who developed the cave tour routes used by visitors since the 1830s. In addition to his work at the cave, he has also engaged in the restoration and preservation of the Bransford Family Cemetery within Mammoth Cave National Park.

Zachary Bray, J.D. is the Monuments Workshop Co-Director and Ashland-Spears Distinguished Research Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. A Kentucky native, Professor Bray began his career at the University of Houston Law Center in 2010, where he was awarded tenure before he returned home in 2016. Professor Bray's research on monument law and monument conflicts, private land trusts, religious land use, low-income housing, the Endangered Species Act, and groundwater law has been published widely, including the William & Mary Law Review, the Brigham Young University Law Review, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review.

Professor Bray has taught a wide range of courses, including Property, Land Use, Trust and Estates, and Statutory Interpretation & Regulation. He received the 2015 Provost's Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Houston, the 2022 University of Kentucky Alumni Association's Great Teacher Award, and the 2024 Duncan Teaching Award from the J. David Rosenberg College of Law. He has also taught at the Washington University School of Law and the William & Mary Law School.

Professor Bray earned a J.D. from Yale Law School. He completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy and History at the University of Notre Dame. Before entering academia, Professor Bray worked in Kentucky for the Honorable Jennifer B. Coffman, in Houston for the Honorable Carolyn Dineen King, and in Los Angeles for Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. He is an active member of the Kentucky bar and has been admitted to practice in California (inactive) as well as multiple federal courts.

Shea Brown has been a Deputy Clerk for the Fayette County Clerk’s Office in the Land Records Department for over 24 years. He currently serves as the Special Projects Deputy for the Land Records Department, and he is the Supervising Director of the Digital Access Project (DAP) with the County Clerk’s Office. Mr. Brown has also been the Pastor of Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, in Lancaster, KY for over 17 years. He currently serves as the Dean of Religious Education for the Baptist Unified Christian Leadership Conference and for the South District Missionary Baptist Association. Mr. Brown serves as a member of the Board and African-American Advisory Council for the Ashland Henry Clay Estate Memorial Foundation.

Kayla Bush is a historian, journalist, and professor. She is a graduate of the University of Kentucky, where she received her M.A. in history. Her work has been published by Castle & Key Distillery and M.I.A. Media Group. A descendant of the Elm Bend community, Bush is the co-lead of the Unexpected Stories Project, which investigates the former rural, Black settlement through oral histories, archival research, and field exploration. Her work has been funded by the Kentucky Rural Exchange and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She also co-owns and operates Dova’s Kitchen, a Lexington restaurant inside the historic Greyline Station, and teaches history at Kentucky State University.

Andrew Cenci is an artist based in Louisville, KY. He uses photography to focus on the beauty of the everyday through portraits, contemporary landscapes, and candid images. A self-taught photographer, Andrew primarily creates images on film, choosing to work with traditional practices in order to create bodies of work with poetic sensibility. His recent work includes Baudoinia: An Untold Story of Bourbon, a collaboration with the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies (CIBS) at the University of Kentucky. To learn more about Andrew you can listen to his interview on The Real Photo Show, hosted by Michael Chovan-Dalton and sponsored by the School of Visual Arts’ MFA Photography, Video, & Related Media.

Dr. Jonathan Coleman serves as the Executive Director of the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation. He was the James Still Fellow at the University of Kentucky, earning his doctorate in history in 2014. Before leading the Blue Grass Trust team, Jonathan was the Curator and Assistant Executive Director for the Mary Todd Lincoln House in Lexington, Kentucky. He serves as the Co-Founder and President of the Faulkner Morgan Archive. Dr. Coleman often lectures on queer history and was a consultant for the Kentucky LGBT Heritage Initiative funded by the National Park Service. Coleman’s book, Anywhere, Together: A Queer History of Kentucky, is forthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky.

Dr. Laneshia Conner is a health disparities social scientist with a research focus on reducing HIV risk among older Black women. Her primary research focuses on culturally relevant sexual health programs and educational tools for aging communities and advancing health equity. Her goal is to improve HIV risk reduction efforts for older Black women. Her research and professional development have received both internal and external funding support, including several grants from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Conner’s scholarship also explores innovative teaching methods using horror films and critical pedagogy to engage students on social justice issues. Her secondary interests include how social work can and should support sports and athletics. She is deeply committed to community engagement, serving in multiple leadership roles and coaching youth and high school track teams.

Dr. Anastasia Curwood is Hallam Professor and Department Chair of History and Director of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies at the University of Kentucky. She writes about twentieth-century African-American women and gender through the lens of Black Americans’ engagements with social and political institutions. Her first book, Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages Between the Two World Wars (UNC Press, 2010) centered on contests over African-Americans' marriages in the early twentieth century. Her most recent work, Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics (UNC Press, 2023), traces the course of Chisholm’s extraordinary life, from Caribbean roots to her pathbreaking career in the US Congress and quest for the presidency.

Dr. Steve Davis is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Davis’ research focuses on armed struggle within anti-apartheid politics. He is the author of The ANC’s War Against Apartheid; Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Liberation of South Africa, and serves as the co-Principal Investigator of the Bitter Aloe Project, which applies machine learning to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Archive. He holds a MA and PhD in History from the University of Florida.

Hannah Drake is a blogger, podcast host, activist, public speaker, poet, and author of 11 books. She serves as the co-executive director of IDEAS xLab and co-founder of the (Un)Known Project, which seeks to discover the hidden names and stories of Black people enslaved in Kentucky and beyond. She writes commentary on politics, feminism, and race, and her writing has been featured online at Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, The Bitter Southerner, The Lily, and Harper’s Bazaar. In 2019 during Super Bowl Sunday, Hannah’s poem, "All You Had To Do Was Play The Game, Boy," which addresses the protest by Colin Kaepernick, was shared by film writer, producer and director Ava DuVernay, and then shared by Kaepernick. The poem has been viewed more than two million times.

Hannah was selected by Today’s Woman Magazine as the Most Admired Woman in the Arts, as a Daughter of Greatness by the Muhammad Ali Foundation, and was honored as a Kentucky Colonel. Hannah was selected as a Soros Fellow by the Open Society Foundation, seeking to support individuals they believe will become long-term innovative leaders impacting racial justice. In 2023 Hannah was inducted into the Kentucky Women Remembered exhibit, a permanent exhibit in the State Capitol, which seeks to bring attention to outstanding women who made significant contributions to Kentucky’s history. In 2024 Hannah was the proud recipient of the Living the Vision Award which honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to their community in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision and legacy. One of Hannah’s proudest accomplishments is being awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities by Simmons College of Kentucky. Hannah’s message is thought-provoking and, at times, challenging; however, she believes that it is in uncomfortable spaces that change can take place. “My sole purpose in writing and speaking is not to entertain you. I am trying to shake a nation.”

Seth Garcia, PhD student, University of Kentucky History Department, has been studying Mammoth Cave National Park since his time as an undergraduate, where he earned three bachelor’s degrees in history, anthropology, and secondary social studies education. He is a fellow for the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies (CIBS) and is completing a Special History Study focused on examining Black Life at Mammoth Cave National Park. 

Colonel Judy A. Greene-Baker, retired, lives in Madison County, Kentucky, where she spearheads multiple preservation-related efforts. After 28 years of service in the U.S. Army, Ms. Greene-Baker and her husband Walter returned to Kentucky to take over the Lisle Cunningham Farm, which had been in her family since 1933. President of the Friends of Maple Grove Cemetery, a nonprofit she helped start, Ms. Greene-Baker has invested almost a decade in caring for the Maple Grove site and the stories of those laid to rest there. Greene-Baker and the Friends organization have received three historical preservation awards: the 2026 Yvonne Giles Award presented by the Blue Grass Trust; a Kentucky History Award – Learn From The Past to Build A Better Future presented by the Kentucky Historical Society; and a Kentucky History Publication Award – Madison County, Kentucky, African American Lost History Project presented by the Kentucky Historical Society. She also serves as a board member for the Madison County Historical Society.

Crystal​ ​Gregory​ ​is​ ​a​ ​sculptor​ ​whose​ ​work​ ​investigates​ ​textile​ ​structure​ ​through​ ​a​ ​variety​ ​of​ ​materials. Gregory​ ​received​ ​her​ ​BFA​ ​from​ ​the​ ​University​ ​of​ ​Oregon​ ​and​ ​her MFA from the Fiber​ ​and​ ​Material Studies​ ​Department at the ​the​ ​School​ ​of​ ​the​ ​Art​ ​Institute​ ​of​ ​Chicago. In 2013, she​ was awarded​ ​the​ ​Leonore​ ​Annenberg​ ​Fellowship for​ ​the​ ​Performing​ ​and​ ​Visual​ ​Arts.​ ​With this, she took a role as Artist-in-Residence at The Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Art in Amsterdam, NL.​ Gregory​ ​is​ ​the​ ​Arturo​ ​Alonzo​ ​Sandoval​ ​Endowed​ ​Professor​ ​in​ ​Fiber​ ​within​ ​the​ ​School​ ​of​ ​Arts​ ​and​ ​Visual Studies​ ​at​ ​the​ ​University​ ​of​ ​Kentucky.​ ​Gregory​ ​splits​ ​her​ ​time​ ​between​ ​Lexington,​ ​KY​ ​and​ ​Brooklyn,​ ​NY, and​ ​currently​ ​shows​ ​with​ ​Tatyana​ ​Okshteyn​ ​at​ ​Black​ ​&​ ​White​ ​Gallery/Project​ ​Space​ ​in​ ​Brooklyn,​ ​NY.

Lacy Hale is a nationally-recognized, award-winning painter, muralist, and printmaker whose work is deeply rooted in place—the southeastern Kentucky mountains. She attended Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, NY. Hale has served on the boards of the Kentucky Arts Council and the Appalachian Artisan Center in Hindman, KY. She was a 2015 Nominee for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Award and a Kentucky Foundation for Women Artist Enrichment Grant recipient. Her recent piece, the “Stream of Stories” mosaic in Whitesburg, Kentucky, uses donated broken objects, or treasures, to commemorate the 2022 floods and the community’s endurance.

Dr. Vanessa M. Holden is currently an Associate Professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is also the director of the Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative. Dr. Holden is the author of Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community (University of Illinois Press), winner of the 2021 James H. Broussard First Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Surviving Southampton was also shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award. Dr. Holden serves as a faculty adviser and consultant on several public history and digital humanities projects, including Freedom on the Move; Black Horsemen of the Kentucky Turf, and a grant project that interprets the Southampton Rebellion.

Emily Jones Hudson is the founder of the Southeast Kentucky African American Museum and Cultural Center, which seeks to share stories of African Americans in Eastern Kentucky. The Center’s History Speaks from the Grave program involves the community in the resurrection of untold stories by documenting and researching headstones in local cemeteries. A native of Hazard, Kentucky, Ms. Jones Hudson holds a degree in English from Berea College and is a writer, author, pastor, and poet. She is also the author of two books, Water-Walking Faith and Touch the Hem, and two poetry collections, Soul Miner and Home.

Dr. Antoinette Jackson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and Director of the USF Living Heritage Institute. Her research focuses on identity and representation at public sites of history and heritage in the US and in the Caribbean. Her latest book, Heritage, Tourism, and Race—the Other Side of Leisure, was published by Routledge in 2020. Dr. Jackson and her team launched the Black Cemetery Network on June 15, 2021, as a call to action to raise awareness about the national issue of Black cemetery erasure and the impact on building a comprehensive knowledge of American history.

Gerry Seavo James is a social artist, researcher, leader, and storyteller advancing the relationship between people, place, nature, and culture. He previously served as Deputy Campaign Director of the Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All campaign, where he helped lead national work on outdoor access and the fight against historical erasure across national parks and public lands. His work has brought together conservation organizations, historians, educators, community leaders, and grassroots partners to advance the relationship between people, place, and nature. Gerry is also the founder of Explore Kentucky, which works to expand outdoor accessibility, build environmental literacy, and improve the quality of life for people in Kentucky through the outdoors. He has been interviewed by and featured in outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, National Parks Traveler, and other national and regional media.

Dr. Caitlyn Jones is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Women and Gender and the Monuments Workshop. She has spent her career practicing public history in a variety of spaces. She helped build the feminist digital humanities project Sharing Stories from 1977, served as an editor for Houston History magazine, produced podcasts for Public Historians at Work, worked as a preservationist for the City of Houston, and joined the editorial department at the National Museum of American History. Before she became a public historian, she was a reporter at the Denton Record-Chronicle in Texas. Caitlyn received her master's degree in public history and her PhD in women's history from the University of Houston.

Martha S. Jones is a writer, historian, legal scholar and public intellectual whose work aims to understand the politics, culture, and poetics of Black America. Her latest book – The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir (2025) – recounts her family’s encounters with race and color through the story of five generations. She is the author of prize-winning histories that survey the vast American past, from slavery and the founding, the Civil War and Reconstruction, women’s suffrage and Jim Crow, on through modern Civil Rights and present day race and identity, including Vanguard: How Black Women Broker Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020), and Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018). 

For the New York Times, she has written on culture and travel; her opinion columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Politico, Talking Points Memo, and USA Today. You can see and hear her on outlets such as NPR’s Here & Now and 1A, CNN’s Amanpour, MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, and on podcasts such as The Ezra Klein Show and the 19th*’s The Amendment.

Her work has enjoyed generous recognition including book prizes from the American Historical Association, the Organization for American History, the American Society for Legal History, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as fellowships from Berlin’s Institute for Advance Study, the National Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and the American Historical Association. She was most recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Jones teaches for the Department of History and the SNF Agora Institute and is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor. She also directs the Hard Histories at Hopkins Project where her lab investigates the history of slavery and racism connected with Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. 

James Kay II holds the office of Woodford County Judge/Executive and previously represented the 56^th District in the Kentucky House of Representatives, which includes all of Woodford County and parts of Franklin and Fayette Counties. Born and raised in Woodford County, he attended the University of Kentucky, earning an undergraduate degree in history and political science and a J.D. from the University of Kentucky College of Law. In addition to his political service, his career includes time as a staff member for Kentucky’s Legislative Research Commission and as a practicing attorney. 

Dr. Philip Mink is the State Archaeologist and the Director of the William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. The Office of State Archaeology (OSA) is a research and public-service unit of the University of Kentucky and serves as the official repository for archaeological site information in the Commonwealth. Dr. Mink has served at the University for more than 25 years, most recently as the OSA Assistant Director. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Kentucky and an MA from the University of Cincinnati.

Sherman Neal II is an attorney and decorated Marine Corps veteran who currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Sierra Club Military Outdoors campaign. In his current position, he advocates for policy solutions to enhance outdoor access for the military community, leads a national outings program, and serves as a community organizer on issues at the intersection of civil rights and environmental justice. Sherman grew up in Naperville, IL and currently resides in Johns Creek, GA.

Liam Niemeyer covers government and policy in Kentucky and its impacts throughout the Commonwealth for the Kentucky Lantern. He most recently spent four years reporting award-winning stories for WKMS Public Radio in Murray. He has reported for public radio stations across the country from Appalachia to Alaska, most recently as a reporter for WOUB Public Media in Athens, Ohio. He is a recent alumnus of Ohio University and enjoys playing tenor saxophone in various jazz groups.

Jessica Paine is the founder and editor of The Murray Sentinel, a community-oriented newsroom focusing on local stories and news from Calloway County, Kentucky. A Murray native, Jessica recognized a gap in local media coverage. Prompted by the pandemic, she founded the Sentinel by leveraging research expertise from her career in academia alongside her local knowledge and hometown perspective. Jessica is also a registered dietitian and holds Master’s degrees in both nutrition and nonprofit leadership. 

Dr. Melynda J. Price, J.D., is the Monuments Workshop Co-Director, the Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan.   

She was previously the inaugural J. David Rosenberg Professor of Law and the John and Joan Gaines Professor of Humanities at the University of Kentucky, where she also served as Director of the Gaines Center for the Humanities. Dr. Price’s research focuses on race, gender and citizenship, the politics of punishment and the role of law in the politics of race and ethnicity in the U.S. and at its borders. Her research and fellowship recognitions include a 2017 University of Kentucky Research Professor distinction, a 2016-2027 Princeton University fellowship in the Law and Public Affairs program, and a 2008 Ford Foundation Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship, hosted by the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas School of Law. 

Dr. Price is the author of At the Cross: Race, Religion and Citizenship in the Politics of the Death Penalty (Oxford University Press, 2015).  Her work has been published in peer-reviewed social science and law journals, newspapers, and literary journals. She holds a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. She completed her undergraduate studies in Physics at Prairie View A&M University.

Lynn Pruett is a farmer, writer, journalist, and researcher. Pruett is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the University of Alabama, where she received her MFA. Along with her husband, she owns and operates Four Hills Farm, the site of the former Elm Bend settlement in Woodford County. She co-leads the Unexpected Stories project, working to bridge ancestry, place-based knowledge, and historical inquiry to ensure that rural Black communities like Elm Bend receive their rightful place in Kentucky history. Her fiction has been published in War, Literature & Art, The American Voice, Southern Exposure, Still: The Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Arts & Letters. She's published one novel, Ruby River and writes for The Farmer’s Pride and The Woodford Sun. 

Reverend Rhondalyn Randolph is the Senior Pastor of Pleasant Point Baptist Church in Utica. Under her leadership, the historic 150-year-old church was revitalized, expanded its outreach, and was officially recognized as a Kentucky historical landmark. She also serves as the Vice President of the NAACP Kentucky State Conference and past President of the Owensboro NAACP Branch (2014 - 2025). A native of Madisonville and longtime Owensboro resident, Rhondalyn has devoted her career to service, leadership, and advocacy — working at the intersection of faith, justice, and community development. Rev. Randolph is a graduate of Owensboro Community & Technical College and Western Kentucky University, and she completed the Leadership Owensboro program in 2000 and 2021.

Dr. Karen Rignall is an Associate Professor of Community and Leadership Development within the University of Kentucky’s Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. A cultural anthropologist, Dr. Rignall specializes in issues of resource access and control in North Africa and the central Appalachian region of the US. Her research and community-engaged work addresses just energy and economic transitions in rural mountain zones, with a focus on agrarian change, rural civic infrastructure and political dynamics, land rights, and natural resource governance. She also serves as a Project Director for LiKEN Knowledge’s Stories of Place program in Martin County, Kentucky.

Dr. Nicole Roth is the Site Identification Program Administrator at the Kentucky Heritage Council. Previously, Nicole served as the administrative director at the Kentucky School for the Blind Charitable Foundation. She holds a Ph.D. in Archaeology and an MA in European Prehistory from the University of Sheffield, England. She also earned a BA in Anthropology with a concentration in Social Sciences from the University of Louisville.

Dr. Gayle Rubin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. Much of her research has focused on San Francisco’s South of Market, a formerly industrial and working-class residential district that has undergone significant change over the last several decades. She has been engaged in projects to preserve, remember, and memorialize some of the rapidly vanishing histories of this part of the city. These have included public art, historical markers, sidewalk plaques, and other forms of placemaking. Her collected essays were published in Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Duke University Press, 2011).

Dr. Jim Seaver has served as the Community Engagement Coordinator at the Kentucky Historical Society since 2022. In that capacity, he also coordinates the Historical Marker Program for the state government. Long before arriving at KHS, Jim considered himself a historical marker enthusiast, cemetery buff, and scholar of the politics of memory and commemoration. He was born and raised in Lexington but calls Frankfort home now. Jim has a B.A. in History from the University of Kentucky and an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Indiana University. His favorite markers in the state are about Kentucky food.

Dr. Mel Stein is an associate professor in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department at the University of Kentucky. Prior to coming to UK, she completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Rutgers University Center for Race & Ethnicity and in the Gender Studies Department at Indiana University. She received her BA from Franklin & Marshall College and her PhD in History from Rutgers University in 2008, specializing in African-American and women’s/gender history. While at Rutgers, Stein was also a graduate fellow at the Institute for Research on Women, an Excellence Fellow at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research, and head research assistant at the Center for Race and Ethnicity.

Tiffany Sturdivant is the Executive Director of Appalshop, a nonprofit arts and education organization that uplifts contemporary Appalachian creativity, supports community-led justice initiatives, and challenges regional stereotypes in commercial culture. She serves as the Lead Organizer of Performing Our Future, a national coalition of cultural leaders working to strengthen communities through collaboration and storytelling. Raised in Mississippi, Tiffany's background spans healthcare, community organizing, and voting rights advocacy across the South. She is passionate about preserving culture while helping organizations navigate change with compassion, accountability, and creativity.

Kopana Terry is a preservationist, photographer, musician, producer, oral historian, and archivist with nearly twenty-five years of experience in libraries and archives focused on traditional and digital preservation, newspapers, oral history, media capture, and reformatting. Since 2013, she has been the Oral History Archivist for the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. She is also the Curator of Historic Newspapers for the Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program. Her research engages art and artists (including architects), the built environment and cultural landscapes, Appalachia, and news media and oral history management and preservation. She holds a BA in Fine Art, a Master’s in Library and Information Science, a Master’s in Historic Preservation, and a Graduate Certificate in Appalachian Studies.

Belle Townsend is the Communications Director for the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, leading media relations, digital strategy, and messaging to uplift working people and strengthen union power across Kentucky. She is also a dues-paying union member of Local 4 BAC KY/IN. Originally from Robards in Henderson County, Belle now lives in Franklin County. She was a 2024–2025 Youth Organizing Fellow with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and received the 2024 YPAL Award from the Young Professionals Association of Louisville. Belle is a multi-published poet and founder and editor-in-chief of Backwoods Literary Press, a nonprofit project amplifying diverse, working-class voices from rural communities. She regularly curates panels, leads creative workshops, and hosts events.

Dean Gregory Van Tatenhove of the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law previously served as a U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky, a role he held from 2006 until becoming dean of the college in July 2026. Previously, he served as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, chief of staff for U.S. Representative Ron Lewis and an Honors Program Trial Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice.

In each of these roles, Van Tatenhove demonstrated broad and substantive senior-level leadership, managing complex multidisciplinary teams, overseeing substantial budgets and adjudicating complex legal and public policy issues. He has served as chair of various organizational committees, including the Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, the Sixth Circuit Criminal Pattern Jury Instruction Committee and the U.S. Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, leading strategic planning initiatives and developing and implementing policies and procedures. Appointed by the Chief Justice as chair of the Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, Van Tatenhove led a talented group of judges in reaching consensus on the most prominent issues facing the judiciary. 

Dr. Daniel Vivian is a historian and preservation practitioner whose research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Jim Crow South. He is the author of A New Plantation World: Sporting Estates in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1900-1940; coeditor of and a contributor to Leisure, Plantations, and the Making of a New South: The Sporting Plantations of the South Carolina Lowcountry and Red Hills Region, 1900-1940. Dr. Vivian has received multiple awards for his teaching, including recognition for community-engaged courses that explored contested historical subjects. Before earning his Ph.D., Dr. Vivian held positions with the National Register of Historic Places, the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. 

Mackenzie (Kenzie) New Walker has worked as Executive Director of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum since 2018. Raised in the central Appalachian coalfields as the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of union coal miners, she works at the intersection of public history, historic preservation, and creative placemaking to preserve and interpret the landscapes and legacies of the Mine Wars. She serves as Project Director for Courage in the Hollers, an initiative to create the nation's largest labor history driving trail through community-designed monuments and interpretive sites commemorating the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain.