Dr. Francena F. L. Turner is a member of the second cohort of NPS Mellon Humanities Fellows serving as the Black Land Use and Migration in the Lowcountry, 1865-1965 Fellow (park hosts: Lowcountry Parks (Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie NHP, Charles Pinckney NHS, Reconstruction Era NHP, and Reconstruction Era National Historic Network). Turner is the former (2020-2024) CLIR/Mellon Fellow and Postdoctoral Associate for Data Curation in African American History and Culture at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). In that role, she was the project manager & principal interviewer for the Black Experience at the University of Maryland Oral History Project. Turner is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in History at Fayetteville State University where she teaches African American History & Oral History, and the historian & digital archivist for the Mary Jane Legacy Project. Turner is most interested in issues of equity, agency, and thriving in education, and her research explores Black women’s P-20 education and career trajectories in higher education and Black student organizers and activists at HBCU and PWIs. She serves on the inaugural Board of Directors of the Black Oral Historians Network, and her most recent publications can be found in Nursing History Review, Paedagogica Historica and the Oral History Review. Turner holds a doctorate in History of Education and an EdM in Education Policy Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and she is a graduate of Fayetteville State University (History) and Fayetteville Technical Community College (Respiratory Care).
