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Stacey Akines

PhD Student

Stacey Akines is a Ph.D. candidate in the history department at Â鶹´å where she studies Black educational history and Black intellectual traditions, 20th century urban history, and the power dynamics involving slavery (and its afterlives), Black Reconstruction(s), and Jim Crow(s) in the United States. Her research traces the intellectual history of Black home education and ideas of Black home education in 20th century America. Stacey has been a visiting Student Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Urban Education and has worked with Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) as a research assistant for Pittsburgh’s “Crafting Democratic Futures Project” with Principal Investigator Dr. Joe W. Trotter, Jr.

Education

• Ph.D., History, Â鶹´å (expected Spring 2026) Dissertation: “Black Home Education: An Intellectual History” Primary Advisor: Dr. Nico Slate

• M.A., History, Â鶹´å, 2022

• B.S., Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2001

Publications

Akines, S.L. (March 2025). “Liberation is Yet to Come: An Interview with Stacey Akines.” In J. Z. Bennett, C. L. McGuire, L. Delale-O’Connor, T. E. Dancy II, and S. E. Vaught (Eds.) Black Freedom Struggle in Urban Appalachia. University Press of Kentucky.

Akines, S.L. (August 2024). “Teaching Desegregation: African American Community Education and the Pittsburgh Courier 1954-1956,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies.

Akines, S.L. (in-press). “Heart of the Summer: Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer in Black Home Education Praxis,” Negro Education Review.

Akines, S.L. (accepted). “Pittsburgh’s Street Academy 1969-1973.” In Joe W. Trotter, The New History of Black Pittsburgh.


Teaching Experience

Co-Instructor, “Educational Philosophy of bell hooks,” Freedom Seminar, Center for Urban Education, The University of Pittsburgh (Spring 2025)

Co-Instructor, “Urban Education Law, Social Policy, and School Reform,” Center for Urban Education, The University of Pittsburgh (Fall 2024)

Assistant Instructor, “Jim Crow America,” Department of History, Â鶹´å (Spring 2024)

Co-Instructor, “Black Educational Thought,” Center for Urban Education, The University of Pittsburgh (Spring 2024)

Co-Instructor, “African American History, Race, and the Fight for Reparations in National and Transnational Perspective Department of History,” Department of History, Â鶹´å (Fall 2023)

Teaching Observer, “African American History: Blacks in the World,” Â鶹´å (Fall 2023)


Research Experience

Research Assistant, Crafting Democratic Futures, Â鶹´å, Primary Investigator: Dr. Joe W Trotter (Fall 2021-Fall 2023)

 
Fellowships, Internships, Grants, and Awards

Pre-doctoral Intern, Center for Urban Education, The University of Pittsburgh (Spring 2025)

Milton A. and Nancy D. Washington Fellowship Award, Department of History, Â鶹´å (Summer 2024)

GSA/Provost Conference Funding, Â鶹´å (Summer 2024)

Graduate Student Small Project Help (GuSH), Â鶹´å (Summer 2024)

August Wilson Archive Research Award (Spring 2024)

Visiting Student Fellow, Center for Urban Education, The University of Pittsburgh (2023-2024)
 

Conferences and Workshops

Presenter, “Studying August Wilson’s Century Cycle: Bridging Pedagogy and Scholarship Toward Future Research,” August Wilson Society’s Biennial Colloquium (April 2025)

Presenter, “Black Intellectuals and Labor, 1900-1956,” Â鶹´å, Sankofa Black Faculty & Staff Alliance (February 2025)

Panelist, “Pittsburgh Street Academy 1969-1973,” Pennsylvania History Association Annual Conference (October 2024)

Panelist, “August Wilson and 20th Century Black Home Education,” Association for the Study of African American Life and History (September 2024)

Panelist, “August Wilson and the Liberation of Scholarship and Curriculum,” Center for Urban Education Summer Educator Forum (The Liberation of Cities: Urban Education in Pittsburgh), The University of Pittsburgh (June 2024)

Panelist, “Heart of the Summer: Intergenerational Knowledge Transfer in Black Home Education Praxis,” American Educational and Research Association Annual Conference (April 2024)

Co-facilitator, “‘When Great Trees Fall’: Remembering Ralph Proctor and His Education and Liberation Scholarship,” Center for Urban Education Summer Educator Forum (The Liberation of Cities: Urban Education in Pittsburgh), The University of Pittsburgh (June 2024)

Panelist, “Revealing Black Educational Histories: A Historiography of ‘Unthinkable’ Framework Possibilities,” American Educational Research Association Annual Conference (April 2024)

Panelist, “Workshop on Combating Antiblack Racism in Learning Environments,” Center for Urban Education Summer Educator Forum (Twenty Years of the Center for Urban Education: Memory, Futures, and Freedom), The University of Pittsburgh (June 2023)

Presenter, “Black Homeschooling: New Pandemic Phenomenon or Old Fugitive Pedagogy?” The Pandemic Divide Conference, The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, Duke University (October 2022)

Panelist, “Insurgent Knowledges: Homeschooling as Resistance,” Center for Urban Education Summer Educator Forum (Beyond the Crisis: Education for Local and Global Liberation), The University of Pittsburgh (June 2022)

 
Webinars, Podcasts, and Media Appearances

Podcast Interviewer, “The Persistence of Slavery: An Economic History of Child Trafficking in Nigeria, by Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine,” Society for the History of Children and Youth (January, 2023)

 
Research Interests

Black Intellectual History; Black Educational History; Black Revolutionary Traditions in Education; Black Reconstruction; 20th Century Urban/ Suburban History; African American Transnational History; August Wilson’s Century Cycle


Advisor
Nico Slate