A Love Letter to Black Women in the Academy: Lessons from the Sankofa Research Intensive

• In Event: The Sankofa Research Intensive (SRI): A Fugitive Space for Scholars Centering Black Children In Research

Abstract

This conceptual paper explores the Sankofa Research Intensive (SRI) as a living love letter to Black women in the academy, offering a culturally situated, affirming, and sustaining praxis by which to transform and humanize education research. Rooted in Sankofa and Endarkened Feminist Epistemology, the study draws on letters, voice recordings, and artifacts from 11 Black women doctoral students to illuminate the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual restoration made possible through Jegnaship and daughtering. Findings reveal how the SRI created conditions of relief and intellectual safety. In response to AERA’s call to unforget and imagine, this work affirms Black women as knowledge protectors and community-builders enacting intergenerational resistance and epistemic liberation.

Authors

• Bisola A. Wald, University of Minnesota

• N'Dyah McCoy, University of Miami

• Keara L. Williams, University of California - Los Angeles

• Sophia Wells-Williams, George Mason University

• Kayla Miller, College of Mount Saint Joseph

• Shemiyah Holland, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Erica B. Edwards, Wayne State University