Whitney Battle-Baptiste

Whitney Battle-Baptiste is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds leadership roles as President of the American Anthropological Association (2023-2025) and the 2024/2025 Charles Norton Memorial Lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America. Her work integrates activism with scholarship, focusing on race, gender, and class through archaeological and historical frameworks.

• Affiliations: W. E. B. Du Bois Center, American Anthropological Association (President), Black Advisory Council at UMass Amherst.

Research Interests: Battle-Baptiste’s work centers on African diaspora studies, Black Feminist theory, and material culture. She examines historical sites such as Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage Plantation, the Abiel Smith School, and the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite. Her methodologies emphasize critical heritage studies and community-based archaeology in North America and the Caribbean.

Publications: Includes Black Feminist Archaeology (2011), W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America (2018), and ongoing projects like the second edition of Black Feminist Archaeology.

Awards: Charles Norton Memorial Lecturer (2024/2025).

Labs/Teams: Directs the W. E. B. Du Bois Center, leading initiatives on Black intellectual history and community engagement. Collaborates on heritage projects like the Millars Plantation site in Eleuthera, Bahamas.