Senior Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
kslocum@unc.edu
919.843.5105
Dr. Karla Slocum was named the inaugural senior associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, effective September 1, 2022. Karla has distinguished herself as a leader in her 25 years at Carolina. She is currently the Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Chair in Public Policy in the department of anthropology and has served as director of the Institute of African American Research from 2013 to 2021. She was also co-director of the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (MURAP), a program designed to prepare undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds for future careers in the academy.
At IAAR, she has led a number of programs that facilitate and raise the visibility of diverse approaches to scholarship on race. This past year, she has overseen the IAAR’s SLATE initiative — Student Learning to Advance Truth and Equity, an initiative to engage undergraduates in a critical understanding of race, racism and racial equity, especially as they concern African Americans.
She has spearheaded and co-chaired the anthropology department’s concentration on Race, Difference and Power; was the senior faculty mentor for the Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity; and served as a board member for the Latina/o studies minor, the Duke-UNC Consortium for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Center for the Study of the American South and the Stone Center for Black Culture and History. She has taught courses on gender and culture; race, ethnography and Black Communities; and Caribbean societies. Her research interests focus on the social dynamics of race and community, especially historic rural Black communities in the African diaspora. Most recently, she is the author of Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West.