Director

Dr. TaKeia N. Anthony is the Director of the Freddye T. Davy Honors College at Hampton University and Associate Professor.  As a Historian, Dr. Anthony’s areas of expertise are the African Diaspora and Archiving. She has lectured and spoken on panels throughout the United States, South Korea, The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Columbia, London, and Ghana.  She also curated the archival records of the James Weldon Johnson Branch (Jacksonville, Florida) of The Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH) where she is the branch Historian. 

As an authoress Dr. Anthony has published several articles, book chapters, and a historical spoken word album titled Dr. TaKeia Speaks: The Inception (Band camp). Her most recent publication is a book titled, Delta Research and Educational Foundation: 55 Years of Black Women’s Intellectualism and Philanthropy, 1967-2022.  This research chronicles the founding and development of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Foundation. Her first book, The Universal Ethiopian Students’ Association, 1927-1948: Mobilizing Diaspora (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), expands the study of the African Diaspora by illuminating the mobilized diaspora and the UESA.

Dr. Anthony is also the recipient of several awards and fellowships.  She was awarded the Freedom Scholar Award from ASALH in 2023 at their annual conference and meeting.  She was a 2025-2026 fellow of the HBCU Executive Leadership Institute (ELI) hosted by Clark- Atlanta University and a 2023-2026 Brown University Digital Publishing Fellow.  Previously, Dr. Anthony was a member of the 2023 cohort of Bluegrass Tomorrow’s Academic Leadership Academy (ALA), a fellow in the 2022 Council of Postsecondary Education’s (CPE) Cohort of the Academic Leadership Development Institute (ALDI), a 2022 member of Brown University’s inaugural Born Digital Publishing Summer Fellows, the 2020-2022 Delta Research and Educational Foundation Vivian A. Ware Research Fellow, a 2021-2022 member of the Howard University Social Justice Consortium and a 2019-2021 Duke-NCCU John Hope Franklin Digital Humanities Fellow.

Dr. Anthony is a native of Bowling Green, Kentucky where she is the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in history.  She serves on the Board of Directors of the African-American Museum-Bowling Green Area and was the 2015 recipient of the Women of Achievement, Native Daughter Award, given by the Bowling Green Human Rights Commission.  She is an alumna of Howard University in Washington D.C. and North Carolina Central University (NCCU) where she was inducted into the 2016 Class of 40 Under 40.  Prior to joining Hampton University, Dr. Anthony was the Executive Director of the A. Philip Randolph Social Justice, Law, and

Economic Policy Institute and the Dean of the Honors College at Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, Florida.  She served as the Dean of the Graduate School and Honors College and Director of the Center for the Excellence in the Study of Kentucky African-Americans (CESKAA) at Kentucky State University.  Dr. Anthony served at her alma mater, NCCU, as an Assistant Professor of History.  There she won the 2020 College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2019 College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Research Award.  She began her career in academia as an Assistant Professor of History and Director of Public History at Edward Waters College.  There, Dr. Anthony was the 2017 Teacher of the Year and inducted in the 2016 Class of Jacksonville Black Pages 20 Under 40.