Linda Heywood

Professor Linda Heywood is the author of Contested Power in Angola, editor of and contributor to Central Africans: Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, and co-author with John Thornton of Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of America (Cambridge University Press, July 2007), which won the Melville J. Herskovits Award for the best scholarly work on Africa published in English in 2007. She is completing her book project entitled “Queen Njinga: History, Memory and Nation in Angola and Brazil.” Her articles on Angola and the African Diaspora have appeared in The Journal of African History, Journal of Modern African Studies, Slavery and Abolition, and the Journal of Southern African Studies. She has served as a consultant for numerous museum exhibitions, including African Voices at the Smithsonian Institution, Against Human Dignity sponsored by the Maritime Museum, and the new exhibit at Jamestown, Virginia. She was also one of the history consultants and appeared in the PBS series African American Lives (2006) and Finding Oprah’s Roots (2007), as well as was a consultant for the PBS series Blacks in Latin America (2012).