Cheryl R. Rodriguez is Professor of Africana Studies and Anthropology in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida. She served for 12 years as the Director of the Institute on Black Life. Her research and teaching focus on ethnographic methods; the intersection of race, gender, class and housing policy; histories of local communities; Black women’s community activism; and Afro-Cuban women’s lives in Tampa.  Dr. Rodriguez is currently Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded project on histories of racial violence in Florida. Her publications include two edited volumes, Transatlantic Feminisms: Women and Gender Studies in Africa and the Diaspora, co-edited with Dzodzi Tsikata and Akosua Ampofo and The Power and Freedom of Black Feminist and Womanist Pedagogy co-edited with Gary Lemons. She is a former Mellon Research Fellow and the 2022 recipient of the Ira Harrison Legacy Award by the Association of Black Anthropologists.