Biography:

Samantha Q. de Vera is a Just Transformations/CBDR Postdoctoral Fellow 2022-2023. De Vera received a PhD in History from the University of California, San Diego, and an MA in English from the University of Delaware. In July 2023, de Vera will be an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Irvine. Her project, “A Freedom No Greater Than Bondage: Black Refugees and Unfree Labor at the Dawn of Mass Incarceration,” traces the lives of Black refugees and formerly enslaved people who experienced incarceration in the hands of the Union military (and thereby the federal government) during the Civil War and Reconstruction era. De Vera also a long-time member of the Colored Conventions Project (CCP), having created several digital exhibits that explore Black activism and politics. Her publications on the Colored Conventions movement center Black women’s activism in the long nineteenth century.