Scholars and Personnel

 

Marcyliena Morgan

Executive Director

morgan@hiphoparchive.org










Professor Marcyliena Morgan's Bio

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Alvin Benjamin Carter III

Program Coordinator

carter@hiphoparchive.org

Alvin coordinates projects and events for the Hiphop Archive and works closely with staff and participants at the Hiphop Archive and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University.

His undying commitment to Hiphop is evident on academic, entrepreneurial, and social levels. He graduated from Northeastern University with a B.S. in Music Industry. During his time there he hosted a morning radio show, started two businesses, and sat on an event planning board that booked concerts with major artists such as Method Man, Busta Rhymes, and Ludacris. Now at the Hiphop Archive, Alvin is ready to take his commitment to Hiphop to the next level.

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Chhay Chhun

Website Consultant

chhun@hiphoparchive.org

After a 5-year stint in the corporate world, Chhay has refocused his energies to completing a collection of poetry, trading a paycheck for a purpose. He is a DJ/b-boy, was raised in the Bronx, and currently resides in South Harlem. He is also founder of Custom Insites, LLC, a Web Design & Development Company.

 

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Daylan Dufelmeier

dufelmeier@hiphoparchive.org

Daylan is a researcher for the Hiphop archive, focusing on the Katrina project. He is an aspiring academic with a day job that keeps him in Chicago.
Daylan was born and raised in Australia with roots in Chicago. After moving to the USA he attended and graduated from Florida A&M University with a degree in Philosophy & Religion. Since college Daylan has worked in varying capacities as an organizer, educator, researcher and at times all three. He is committed to the fight.

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Dawn-Elissa Fischer

def@hiphoparchive.org

Dawn-Elissa Fischer (a.k.a. the "D.E.F." Professor) is one of the Associate Directors assisting Professor Morgan at the Hiphop Archive. The DEF Prof currently works with the Hiphop University, Youth Education, Gender and Sexuality as well as Japanese Hiphop projects at the Hiphop Archive. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University, where she teaches courses on black popular culture, digital research design and visual ethnography. DEF has worked on a number of different community-based campaigns using Hiphop to address issues of voter disenfranchisement, gender based violence, literacy and the digital divide. For over 15 years, she has been traveling within and outside of the United States, committing herself to academic and political work. She has studied and worked with Hiphop social movement organizations internationally in Japan, South Africa, Tanzania, Senegal, Sweden, China, Norway, Cuba, Jamaica and Russia. She has received various awards and grants for her research, including support from the Japan Foundation, the Mellon Mays Fellowship Program and the Social Science Research Council. DEF is currently working on a manuscript concerning Hiphop, race and blackness in Japan.

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Jenigh Garrett

garrett@hiphoparchive.org

Jenigh's interest in hip-hop stems from the belief that Hip-Hop is EMPOWERMENT. A Chicago native, she is dedicated to the fight for equality and justice. Her professional activities span a multitude of disciplines that focus on one overarching theme: the POWER of divergent thinking in an apathetic culture and the unlimited POWER of youth in society. To her, EMPOWERMENT begins with knowledge so it is no surprise that she was a Chicago Public School teacher for five years. But her efforts were not limited to the classroom. She left the classroom to co-found "Sisters", a program for twelve to thirteen year old girls that focused on fostering peer relationships between young women in urban centers. She also co-founder of "AFACT in EFFECT", an organization designed to increase political awareness of issues impacting African American low-income neighborhoods. Jenigh was co-executive producer of "The College Box", a student run music television series that highlighted hip-hop artists- and the law- she was also legal intern representing the rights of African American farmers in North Carolina. She continues to struggle for the fight for social justice and equality. Jenigh has a Bachelors degree from the University of Illinois-Champaign Urbana and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She currently practices law in New York City. Since 2004 she has been the Social Justice Coordinator at the Hiphop Archive. 

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Kyle Kilat

Website Designer and Consultant

kilat@hiphoparchive.org

Born and raised in The Bay, Kyle hooked up with The Archive after graduating from Stanford in 2006. Since then, he has worked as a part-time designer and consultant for The Archive's web projects and properties. For his "day job," he works as an Interaction Designer at Intuit, Inc. (a software company in the Silicon Valley). On the side, he also does work as graphic/web designer for additional businesses and organizations, and runs a custom sneaker and clothing business: Lost Soles Customs.

 

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Sumeeya T. Chishty Mujahid

Counseling Consultant

sumeeya@hiphoparchive.org

"Afro centric South-Asian Half-Woman Half-Amazin" (profound apologies to Nas). Born and bred in Karachi, Pakistan, Sumeeya graduated with a Bachelor's degree from Hampshire College, Massachusetts and a Master's degree in Education from Harvard University. She obtained an Education Specialist degree in Community Counseling from The George Washington University. She has self-published a bi-lingual children's storybook, Nari & Uso, that deals with bridging divides between different cultures and people. A mental-health therapist by profession, Sumeeya's interest in hip-hop concerns two main areas: health and hip-hop and Islamic references in hip-hop.  As a therapist Sumeeya's research interest in the role of childhood abuse in our families and its transmission of violence and poor health within our selves, our communities and our world. Sumeeya can be found across the pond for 2010-2011, in Dusseldorf, Germany.

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Jessica Norwood

The Architect of Political Power

norwood@hiphoparchive.org

Fueled by a belief in the power of the community Jessica began organizing at when she was only eight years old. First, distributing literature to her neighbors on local candidates and organizing neighborhood trash pick-ups to becoming one of the nations most sought after experts on the diversity of youth organizing within politics. After receiving her degree from Northern Illinois University in Political Science, she went on to work with elected officials and community activist in Indiana, Georgia, Louisiana, South Dakota, New York and Washington, DC. Ms. Norwood has gained the most well rounded approach to political organizing as she has served as a campaign manager and field director for federal campaigns as well as deputy director of fundraising and managing director for national youth organizations with budgets that exceed a million dollars annually. Damn, this woman is talented!

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Nicole Hodges Persley

persley@hiphoparchive.org

Nicole Hodges Persley is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Kansas. She completed her Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity at The University of Southern California in 2009. Her dissertation, "Sampling Blackness: Performing African Americanness in Hip-hop Theater and Performance" is the first study to examine the impact of African American racial and cultural identity on the artistic practices of non-African American artists in theater, conceptual art and dance. Her research and teaching interests include: African American Theater and Performance; Hip-hop Studies; African Diaspora Theater; Solo Performance; Popular Culture; Performance Studies, and Improvisation Theory. Hodges Persley currently teaches courses in Acting, Hip-hop in Popular Culture and African American Theater. She has received numerous fellowships and awards including a James Irvine Foundation Fellowship and an undergraduate teaching and mentoring award from the Mellon Foundation. As an actress and director, Hodges Persley has professional credits in theatre, film and television. Her current book project is an comparative study on the performance practices of Hip-hop Theater and Performance artists in the United States, England and France. 

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Josef Sorett

sorett@hiphoparchive.org

Josef Sorett is an interdisciplinary historian of religion in America, with a particular focus on black communities and cultures in the United States. His research and teaching interests include American religious history, African American religions, hip hop and popular culture, religion in/and the arts, and the role of religion in public life.  Currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion and the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University, Josef earned his Ph.D. in African American Studies from Harvard University, and he holds a B.S. from Oral Roberts University and an M.Div. from Boston University. In support of his research, Josef has received fellowships from the Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion, The Fund for Theological Education, Harvard’s Charles Warren Center for American History and Princeton University’s Center for African American Studies. He has published essays and reviews in Culture and Religion, Callaloo, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and PNEUMA: Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. He is currently at work on a book project that explores the significance of religion and spirituality in debates regarding racial aesthetics.  You can learn more about Josef at his website: http://www.josefsorett.com/ 

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Harold Shawn

shawn@hiphoparchive.org

Following his freshman year of high school in 2004 Harold joined the HipHop Archive street team, researching artists as part of an already growing database. Five years later Harold is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in music industry at Northeastern University with a minor in journalism. In addition to his journalistic work, he spends much of his
time at the music studio, composing for a wide range of artists. His music can be found on the web under his production name of Levelsoundz.

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Samson Ayele

Research Assistant

ayele@hiphoparchive.org

Samson is currently an undergraduate studying Economics & Government. He has been passionate about hip-hop from an early age, and focuses his time at the Archive on the growing African hip-hop culture, with a focus on the interplay between traditional African music/dance, and current African hip-hop.

 

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Julienne Coleman

Research Assistant

coleman@hiphoparchive.org

Julienne Coleman began working at the archive in the spring of 2010. A junior concentrating in African American Studies, her main academic interests are linguistic anthropology and the development of black identity, but she has a soft spot for education and youth enrichment. Outside of the archive, she shows her love for the products of black creativity as a member of the Kuumba Singers of Harvard College.

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Keara Cormier-Hill

Research Assistant

cormier-hill@hiphoparchive.org

Keara has been working at the Archive since September 2009 but has loved hip hop since elementary school. She grew up in Houston, Texas on a healthy diet of Southern rap, chopped and screwed music, and plenty of bass. Keara is currently an undergraduate at Harvard studying Sociology and Visual and Environmental Studies and she is most interested in learning how manipulating different forms of media can impact and shape opinions. She is most excited to learn about the regional and global differences in hip hop and the perceptions and power of women in hip hop while working at the Hip Hop Archive.

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Jasmine Ford

Research Assistant

ford@hiphoparchive.org

Jasmine began working in the Archive in the spring of 2010. She is a senior in the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department, with a secondary field in Linguistics. She first became interested in Hip-Hop after taking Urban Speech Communities with Professor Morgan, and is currently writing her senior thesis on the construction of Afro-German identity through Hip-Hop culture, and how it has been used to mobilize the Afro-German community politically since the Leitkultur debates of 2000.

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Christian Free

Research Assistant

free@hiphoparchive.org

Christian began working for the archive in December 2008, after taking a class on Urban Speech Communities with Professor Morgan. He is a senior linguistics concentrator who hails from New Mexico (though born to lifelong New Yorkers in South Jamaica, Queens), and his greatest passion has always been language, both in its structure and its usage in society. His research at the archive focuses on the language of hiphop, and how language is used to construct social identities, signify and index the broader culture, and (his personal favorite) foster competition and feuding among artists. He has been a lifelong fan of hiphop, like his parents before him, having been raised on the sounds of hiphop radio and his parents' narratives of how it all started in their neighborhoods years ago. An aspiring academic, his desire is to bridge the gap between theoretical and applied treatments of language, and hiphop will surely be influential in this pursuit.

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Akshata Kadagathur

Research Assistant

kadagathur@hiphoparchive.org

Akshata began working at the archive in September 2008. She is studying History and Literature with a focus on African American studies at Harvard and plans to graduate in 2011. Since her first listening at the age of 9, Akshata has been in deep with hip hop, especially with strong female MCs and her first love, Reflection Eternal. Her interests include hip hop and pedagogy: using hip hop as a means of approaching the social inequality in the education system. The archive is one big step towards cementing the importance of hip hop in the academic sphere, and Akshata is grateful to be a part.

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Mark Ragheb

Research Assistant

ragheb@hiphoparchive.org

Mark began working at the Archive in the fall of 2008. He is planning on concentrating in Molecular and Cellular Biology with a secondary field in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Mark is from a small town south of Seattle, Washington. He began listening to hip hop shortly after he came to the United States from Brazil at the age of 8, and has loved the music ever since. His academic interests include scientific research, global health, and the social determinants which affect health outcomes of populations.

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Edward Monahan

Research Assistant

monahan@hiphoparchive.org

Ned has been working at the Hiphop Archive since January 2009, and has been a huge hip-hop fan since the late '90s. Ned is currently a sophomore Social Studies concentrator living in Lowell House, contemplating a hip-hop-related thesis. Ned is also director of the hip-hop department, "The Darker Side" at WHRB 95.3 FM, Harvard's student-run radio station. He has an hour-long show on Sunday mornings at 2 am. At the Hiphop Archive, Ned is interested in broadening the context in which he listens to hip-hop. That means learning more about global hip-hop, the role of race in hip-hop today, and trends in the media's portrayal/exploitation of hip-hop for commercial gain.

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Katherine Thompson

Research Assistant

kthompson@hiphoparchive

Kay Thompson has worked with the Hiphop Archive since the summer of 2009, when she conducted field research on hiphop in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria. She is currently writing her senior thesis - and compiling a documentary for the Archive - on the power of hiphop music and language to educate and unify young Nigerians of diverse linguistic, religious, ethnic, and regional backgrounds. Kay is especially interested in the ways that language interacts with social identities and urban spaces to produce social outcomes. Through the Archive, she continues to learn enthusiastically about the Hiphop Nation and Hiphop Globe.

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Justin Walker White

Research Assistant

white@hiphoparchive.org

Justin was born and raised in Washington Heights, NYC. Before coming to Harvard, he went to Hunter Elementary and Hunter High School. He grew up loving football and basketball, but played competitive tennis for 12 years. As far as hip-hop, Justin did not go anywhere without his RCA Discman, circa 1996. He listened to Hot97 religiously (his discman had a then-revolutionary radio feature), and always carried a classic Jay-Z, Biggie, or 2Pac CD on his person. Nowadays, Justin majors in Anthropology and plans to become a comedy writer one day.