Adam Ewing, 2025–26 | National Humanities Center

Adam Ewing (NHC Fellow, 2025–26)

Project Title

Blacklands: The Global Fight for African Freedom

Anthony E. Kaye Fellowship, 2025–26

Associate Professor of African American Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University

Adam Ewing

Adam Ewing studies the global history of Black liberation politics in the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the politics of Black nationalism, pan-Africanism, and anti-colonialism. His first book, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics, examines the spread of Garveyism, the anti-colonial movement spearheaded by Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, across Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, and explores the movement’s success as an incubator of Black community politics in the United States, Malawi, Zambia, and Kenya. The Age of Garvey was the recipient of the 2015 Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize, awarded by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR).

His current project, Blacklands: The Global Fight for African Freedom, explores the way popular traditions of pan-Africanism took root in Black communities across the Atlantic world, catalyzing a multi-decade effort to remake the global order on new terms of racial equality.

Dr. Ewing received his PhD in History from Harvard University. He is currently an associate professor of African American studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Selected Publications

  • Ewing, Adam, ed. “Robert A. Hill and the Archive of Black Memory.” In Essential Writings of Robert A. Hill. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2024.
  • Ewing, Adam and Ronald J. Stephens, eds. Global Garveyism. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2019.
  • Ewing, Adam. “The Challenge of Garveyism Studies.” Modern American History 1, no. 3 (2018): 399–418.
  • Ewing, Adam. “Kimbanguism, Garveyism, and Rebellious Rumor-Making in post-World War I Africa.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society 20, no. 2 (2018): 149–77.
  • Ewing, Adam. The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.
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