Dr. Catherine Lee Porter

Dr. Catherine Lee Porter’s is a professor of History and International Studies at Hampton University. Her area of research is the Global Cold War focusing in Central Africa, most notably the Congo Crisis and how nation, state, and sovereignty intertwined in the larger context of decolonization. Dr. Porter further examines the role of women and gender in their contribution to state making and political identity in history. As a secondary project, Dr. Porter is interested in networks of refugee exchange of secondary citizens of empire, such as Jewish refugee networks in the Belgian Congo in the 1930s and throughout World War II in Africa. Dr. Porter also researches and teaches digital history and canopies and how digital humanities can help illuminate hidden histories of the past and the present.

Dr. Porter has served in several capacities in governmental and non-governmental organizations, such as the U.S. Department of State and the United Nations and currently hold a political appointment on the Commission on Updating Virginia Law to Reflect Federal Recognition of Virginia Tribes. She has published with Oxford University Press and has several forthcoming publications with Indiana University Press, as well as a monograph about gendering independence political thought in the 1940s and the 1950s in the Congo.

Dr. Porter was a Fulbright Scholar to the Democratic Republic of Congo and is a member of the African Studies Association, the American Historical Association, and the Southeastern Regional Seminar in African Studies. Dr. Porter holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. She also has a Master’s from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva, Switzerland and a Master’s in Liberal Arts and African Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dual Bachelor’s in History and International Studies are from Virginia Commonwealth University.