With a Ph.D. in English from Brown University, a B.A. in English from Emory University and over a decade of experience in research and curriculum development, assessment, teaching, program coordination and student development, Sachelle Ford has specialized her work around African American and African Diaspora cultures. She most recently served as a lecturing fellow of Duke University’s Thompson Writing Program, where her courses examined the Black Power movement, the history and culture of African American families, Caribbean literature and contemporary African American literature. Her research interests are in the affective experience of transnational migration in contemporary literature of the African diaspora.

In her role as assistant director of the African American Cultural Center (AACC), Ford will focus on coordinating opportunities for faculty engagement that develop research and scholarship initiatives related to African American and African Diaspora cultures. She will foster collaborative partnerships with academic departments, engage in scholarship with community and academic researchers and create opportunities for faculty, students and visiting scholars to present their academic research about issues that impact African-descended communities, with the goal of raising the academic profile of the AACC and its contributions to the intellectual community at NC State.