Samir Meghelli, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

Dr. Samir Meghelli is an award-winning curator, historian, writer, and educator. He serves as Senior Curator at the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Community Museum, the nation’s first federally-funded community museum (est. 1967). He is also a Visiting Scholar-in-Residence at American University’s Metropolitan Policy Center.Dr. Meghelli received his B.A. (magna cum laude) from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. Prior to joining the Smithsonian Institution, he was a professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as a Visiting Scholar at Northeastern University and the Paris Institute of Political Science (also known as "Sciences Po," located in Paris, France).Dr. Meghelli has two decades of experience in the fields of public history and the public humanities. His research, teaching, and curatorial work have spanned a wide range of fields and topics, including U.S. social movements, African American and African diaspora history, urban history, art history, and postcolonial French Studies. He has curated and consulted for museum exhibitions; executive produced, directed, researched, and consulted for documentary films; and has directed community history projects in Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, DC. His recent exhibitions at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum include: "A Right to the City” (on view 2018-2020) about the history and contemporary dynamics of gentrification and neighborhood activism in Washington, DC, and which also appeared as satellite exhibits at various branches of the DC Public Library; an outdoor and indoor exhibition about food justice issues, “Food for the People” (on view 2021-2022), which received the Smithsonian Award for Excellence in Exhibitions; and “A Bold and Beautiful Vision: A Century of Black Arts Education in Washington, DC, 1900-2000” (currently on view, 2024-2025).Dr. Meghelli is the co-author of “The Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness” (2006) (with James G. Spady & H. Samy Alim), co-editor of “New Perspectives on the History of Marcus Garvey, the U.N.I.A., and the African Diaspora” (2011), and his writings have appeared in various books, newspapers, and scholarly journals, including The New York Times, The Philadelphia Tribune, The Washington Informer, and Black Arts Quarterly, among other places. He is currently completing a book entitled “Hip Hop between New York and Paris: A Transatlantic History” (forthcoming from University of California Press).

Listed skills include History, Research, Teaching, Writing, and 18 others.