Dr. Barbara Ransby is the John D. MacArthur Chair, and Distinguished Professor, in the Departments of African American Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She also directs the campus-wide Social Justice Initiative, a project that promotes connections between academics and community organizers doing work on social justice. She is a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Michigan, where she was a Mellon Fellow. Dr. Ransby is the author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision and Making All Black Lives Matter: Re-imagining Freedom in the 21st Century. She is also editor in chief of Souls: a critical journal of Black politics, culture and society, and is a member of the editorial working group of the London-based journal, Race and Class, and the Editorial Advisory Board of the "Justice, Politics and Power" book series at University of North Carolina Press. She served as President of the National Women's Studies Association from 2016 - to 2018. Dr. Ransby is not only a historian and writer but also a longtime activist.