Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard (Associate Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Irvine) is a Black political scientist who focuses on Black political thought and the material conditions of knowledge production, Black movements, South African historiography; blackness in international relations, diaspora, third world feminisms, decolonizing theory, feminist pedagogy, Black & African feminisms, and racial capitalism/gendered racisms/ sexuality in international relations. Her current work explores cross-generational youth-led political organizing around land return, sexual violence, and colonial legacies in South Africa. She is concerned with political consciousness across generations and creative sites for political education. She is the author of Waste of a White Skin: The Carnegie Corporation and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability (University of California Press 2015) and of articles in African Identities; Journal of Women Politics, and Policy; PS: Political Science and Politics; Critical Ethnic Studies Association; Frontiers: A Journal of Womens Studies; Abolition Journal; Contemptorary; Journal of Contemporary Thought; Politics, Groups and Identities; Race & Class; National Political Science Review; Social Justice; Theory & Event; Kroeber Anthropology Society Papers, among others. Willoughby-Herard is also the co-editor of numerous journal special issues; a new book on Black feminist cultural studies in contemporary South Africa co-edited with Derilene (Dee) Marco and Abebe Zegeye, entitled Sasinda Futhi Siselapha: Black Feminist Approaches to Cultural Studies in South Africa’s Twenty-FiveYears Since 1994 (Africa World Press 2020), and a textbook Theories of Blackness: On Life and Death (Cognella Press 2011). Building intimate and vulnerable spaces for high quality research by under-represented people has required crafting intentional, collaboratively-led, scholar activist formations. Willoughby-Herard is a founding member of the Transnational Black Womxn Scholars of African Politics Research Network with Takiyah Harper-Shipman, Robin Turner, Adom Getachew, and Kira Tait; a founding member of the feminist of color research network LUNAS with Lisa Beard, LaShonda Carter, Khanum Shaikh, Jeanne Scheper, Natalia Molebatsi, Khanum Shaikh, Salvador Zárate, and Deshonay Dozier; and a founding member of the Black Women and Gender Non-Binary research and creative writing group, #InForUs with Onyekachi Ekeogu, Tara Atherley, Desireé Melonas, and Tiffany Caesar. Willoughby-Herard is the Intellectual Wellness Specialist for the Women’s Wellness Garden a digital community for transformation and health founded alongside Joy White, Starlerra Simmons, Kelly Rivas, Sharon Adams, Odunayo Esther Ongunrinu, Ashley Woolard. Such models reflect what Willoughby-Herard has inherited from the radical scholars that fought for space for liberatory histories and “leader-full” movements. She is a Co-Principle Investigator with historian Jessica Millward, lynching scholar LaShonda Carter, and artist and performer Ella Turenne of a Black Digital Humanities online research archive, Activist Studio West: A Digital Repository of Movement Material, that serves as a pathways to doctoral education program for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. These and many other precious places are where and how Willoughby-Herard does her best thinking.  Willoughby-Herard is Humanities Equity Advisor and Special Assistant to the Dean of Humanities on Equity, Diversity and Inclusive Excellence. As President of the 52 year old National Conference of Black Political Scientists Willoughby-Herard and a member of the LGBTQ+ Caucus and the Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics, she/they has found space to grow as a poet, an editor, a reader, a mama, a member of a church choir, a teacher, an undergraduate research supervisor, a friend, an ethical and grounded political scientist, and a Black internationalist lesbian feminist who survived.