Claire Andrade-Watkins

Historian/filmmaker Claire Andrade-Watkins, Ph.D., is a ​​Professor of Media and Africana Studies Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson College. Academic appointments include Brown University, 2022- 2024 Visiting Scholar, Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice; 2018-2022 Visiting Scholar, Africana Studies; 2008-2015 Distinguished Community Practitioner & Senior Fellow, Swearer Center; 2007- 2014 Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America (CSREA), and Fall 2006, Activist-in-Residence, (CSREA).

Dr. Andrade-Watkins, a second-generation Cape Verdean American, is the President of SPIA Media Productions, Inc., a production and distribution company founded in 1998 specializing in media from the Africana Diaspora, and Founding Director and Vice-President of the Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place, Inc., a community-based research initiative created in 2007 and incorporated as a 501c3 in 2013.

Competitively awarded documentary grants include a 2017 RISCA Fellowship in Film & Video, a 2009 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow in Film, a LEF Foundation grant, and several grants from both the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. Festivals include Hot Docs (Toronto), Athens International Film & Video Festival, Black Maria Film Festival, FESTin, and FESPACO (Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso).