Akeia de Barros Gomes
Director of the Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society

Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes is the Director of the Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society and is a Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Lecturer at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Akeia leads the development and implementation of the Center for Black History at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House, which will open as an exhibition space, educational and community programming space and a space for scholarship in 2026. She was lead curator for the 2024 Mystic Seaport Museum exhibition, Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea a multi-year Mellon Foundation-funded project that recovers the history of the founding and development of the Dawnland (New England) through Dawnland Indigenous, African, and African-descended maritime narratives. Akeia taught as professor of American Studies and Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Wheelock College from 2008 to 2017.  She received her BA in anthropology/archaeology at Salve Regina University and her MA and PhD in anthropology/archaeology at the University of Connecticut.

Manisha Sinha
Draper Chair in American History, University of Connecticut

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and the President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship in 2022. She taught at the University of Massachusetts for over twenty years where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed on faculty. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina which was named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico and featured in The New York Times 1619 Project. Her book The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, which won the Frederick Douglass, the Organization of American Historians’ Avery Craven, the Southern Historical Association’s biannual James Rawley, and SHEAR Best Book prizes, was also long listed for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. It was widely reviewed and named editor’s choice in The New York Times Book Review and the book of the week by Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication. She is the author and editor of several other books and articles. Her latest book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 was published this year by Liveright (Norton) and reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New Republic among other outlets.  A historian of the long nineteenth century, her research interests lie in the transnational histories of slavery, abolition, and feminism and the history and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Professor Sinha has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Daily News, Time Magazine, CNN, The Boston Globe, Dissent, The Nation, Jacobin, and The Huffington Post and has been interviewed by the national and international press.

Matthew Warshauer
Professor of History, Central Connecticut State University

Matt Warshauer is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, where he received his bachelors in American Studies.  Fascinated by what he calls “the American paradox,” the ever-challenging conundrum between the nation’s founding document and the difficulties of pursuing essential ideas of freedom, Warshauer pursued an MA and Ph.D. at Saint Louis University.  He has spent the last 30 years exploring the great American experiment in self-government.  The author of five books and countless articles and reviews, Warshauer has written extensively on Andrew Jackson, slavery and the Civil War, and, most recently, 9/11 and how the most important and devastating event of the 21st century has impacted the world in which we live.  Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation: The Real Story of September 11 was just released from Routledge Press. With a unique ability to draw in his audience, Warshauer guides listeners through the complexities of American political and constitutional history so that we can all think more clearly and gain a better of understanding of our role as citizens.