About Us

Folashade Alao, Atlanta Regional Commission

Folashade Alao is the program manager for the Regional Leadership Institute (RLI) at the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC). She earned her PhD from Emory University Institute of Liberal Arts. Her research focused on black women’s artistic production, spatial understanding, and memory and history embedded in Southern physical landscapes. In her current role, she designs and leads RLI, an intensive leadership program that brings together a diverse cross sector, cross regional group of leaders to learn about the key issues, challenges, and opportunities facing the metro Atlanta region through a holistic, interdisciplinary and regional lens.

Brennan Collins, Georgia State University

Brennan Collins is the Associate Director of Writing Across the Curriculum and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Georgia State University. The interdisciplinary nature and technology focus of these programs allows him to work with a diverse faculty in exploring inventive pedagogies. He is particularly interested in creating inter-institutional Atlanta projects and platforms to develop student critical thinking and opportunities for community engagement.

Marni Davis, Georgia State University

Marni Davis is an Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University. Her book Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition (NYU Press, 2012) was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She is currently researching and writing about immigrants in Jim Crow Atlanta (1890-1960). 

Clinton Fluker, Atlanta University Center

Clinton Fluker is the Assistant Director of Engagement and Scholarship at the Atlanta University Center’s Robert W. Woodruff Library where he supervises the Archives Research Center and the GLAM Center for Collaborative Teaching and Learning. In this capacity, he develops exhibitions, programming, and scholarly projects that utilize digital platforms. Fluker also teaches in the Humanities Ph.D. program at Clark Atlanta University and is the co-editor of The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Art + Design (2019).

Daniel Horowitz Garcia, StoryCorps

Daniel is a historian based in Atlanta, Georgia, having received his Bachelor’s and Master’s from Georgia State University. Presently, he is the regional manager for StoryCorps in Atlanta. Mr. Horowitz has 20 years’ experience as an organizer including local, regional, and national campaigns focusing on labor, environmental, criminal justice, and anti-poverty issues.

Katherine Hankins, Georgia State University

Katherine Hankins is an urban geographer and an Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University.  She examines urban change and how social and spatial inequalities are expressed and contested in the urban landscape, primarily at the neighborhood scale.  In her work, she’s examined both the large urban development projects that have shaped neighborhood spaces and the ways in which various actors and organizations respond to such projects, whether through everyday acts, or “quiet politics,” or through sustained neighborhood activism.  She has lived and worked in Atlanta since 2001.

Edward Hatfield, New Georgia Encyclopedia

Edward Hatfield is the Managing Editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia. He has a PhD in History from Emory University and his research examines the politics of metropolitan planning in Atlanta during the latter half of the Twentieth Century.  

Jesse P. Karlsberg, Emory University

Jesse P. Karlsberg, Senior Digital Scholarship Strategist at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, is a scholar of vernacular American music and digital humanities publishing. Jesse is project director and editor-in-chief of the National Endowment for the Humanities–funded Sounding Spirit, a digital library and series of digital scholarly editions of songbooks of vernacular southern sacred music and project director of Readux, a platform for browsing, annotating, and publishing with digitized books. 

Anna Joo Kim, San Diego State University

Anna Joo Kim is Assistant Professor of City Planning in the School Public Affairs at San Diego State University. Her research examines the blurred boundaries between informal and formal jobs for low wage immigrant workers, and how these semi-formal employment arrangements translate into strategies for local economic growth in ethnic neighborhoods. Dr. Kim teaches community and workforce development, planning for immigrant communities in the Atlanta region, and other courses on social, economic, and environmental justice.

Calinda Lee, Atlanta History Center

Educated at Spelman College, New York University and Emory University, Calinda N. Lee is Historian for the Atlanta History Center. As a member of the center’s leadership team, she works to develop plans that inform visitor experiences in exhibitions, historic houses, historic gardens, and public programs/education.

LeeAnn Lands, Kennesaw State University

LeeAnn Lands is an Associate Professor of History at Kennesaw State University. Her research focuses on housing segregation, anti-poverty movements, and spatial inequality. Her book The Culture of Property: Race, Class, and Housing Landscapes in Atlanta, 1880-1950 (University of Georgia Press, 2009) examines the relationship between whiteness and neighborhood landscapes. She is currently completing a book-length project tentatively entitled “We’ll Be Back”: Poor People’s Movements in Atlanta, 1950 to 1980.

Yanni Loukissas, Georgia Tech

Yanni Alexander Loukissas is associate professor of digital media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. His current research interests include participatory mapping, critical visualization, data studies, and smart cities. He is the author of two books, All Data Are Local: Thinking Critically in a Data-Driven Society (MIT Press, 2019) and Co-Designers: Cultures of Computer Simulation in Architecture (Routledge, 2012).

Kali-Ahset Amen, Johns Hopkins University

Rebecca Burns, University of Georgia

Joe Crespino, Emory University

Tim Crimmins, Georgia State University

Andrea Jackson, Black Metropolis Research Consortium

Ben Miller, Emory University

Michael Leo Owens, Emory University

Charles Steffen, Georgia State University

Lawrence Vale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Stewart Varner, University of Pennsylvania

Kerrie Cotten Williams, DC Public Library

Ben Miller, Executive Editor 

Nicole Symmonds, Managing Editor

Lauren Highsmith, Editorial Associate

Amy Li, Editorial Associate

Former Editorial Board Members

Barbara Combs, Clark Atlanta University

Former Advisory Board Members

Dana White, Emory University

Ben Miller, Emory University

Former Editorial Staff

Adam P. Newman, Editorial Associate (2016–2017), Assistant Managing Editor (2017-2019), Managing Editor (2019–2020)

John A. Bernau, Editorial Associate (2018–2019)

Matt Graci, Editorial Associate (2017–2018)

Clint Fluker, Editorial Associate (2016–2018)

Jesse P. Karlsberg, Managing Editor (2016–2019)

Karen L. McCarthy, Editorial Associate (2015–2016)

Stephanie Rodgers, Editorial Associate (2014–2015)

Sarah Melton, Managing Editor (2014–2016)