Amanda Joyce Hall

Amanda Joyce Hall is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), holding the Black Star Assistant Professorship (2024–25). She earned her Ph.D. in History and African American Studies from Yale University (2022) and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Northwestern University and UCSB. Her research focuses on Black internationalism, transnational movements, and anti-apartheid activism across North America, Africa, and the global Black world.

Education includes an AB in Classics and International Studies from Dartmouth College (2011), MA in International and World History from Columbia University and the London School of Economics (focus on student anti-apartheid movements), and an MA in Education from Fordham University where she taught in the South Bronx. She has been supported by prestigious grants including the Fulbright Program, Ford Foundation, and Mellon Mays Fellowship.

Research interests include 20th-century social movements, Pan-Africanism, Black consciousness, and abolitionist frameworks. She hosts the New Books in African American Studies podcast, reviews scholarly works, and has published peer-reviewed articles on student activism and anti-apartheid solidarity networks. Awards include Yale’s Sylvia Ardyn Boone Prize and the Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship.

Teaching spans undergraduate and graduate courses on African American history, global anti-apartheid movements, and U.S. foreign policy. Her interdisciplinary work bridges history, education, and Black studies, emphasizing radical organizing’s role in social justice struggles.