bio

The short version: Tamara J. Walker is an historian, writer, and nonprofit founder with wide-ranging interests. Her first book, Exquisite Slaves: Race Clothing and Status in Colonial Lima, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017 and won the 2018 Harriet Tubman Prize from the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture. More recently, she has been focusing on the theme of global Black mobility. She is the author of Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad (which was published by Crown in 2023 and was a New York Time Book Review Editor’s Choice), as well as several related essays in Time’s Made by History vertical, Smithsonian Magazine, and The Guardian. In addition to working on several new book projects including the biography of a mysterious Black pirate, Tamara is also the co-founder of The Wandering Scholar, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that makes international travel accessible to high-schoolers from underrepresented backgrounds.

The longer, more personal version: As an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College of Columbia University, my research and teaching focus on three interrelated thematic areas: the history of slavery, freedom, and racial formation in Latin America; their legacies in the modern era; and the theme of global Black mobility. My scholarship is also inspired by the methodological concern of recovering the subjectivities of enslaved and free people of African descent who rarely had direct access to writing and whose voices were heavily mediated when they did appear on record.

As a writer, I tend to be more varied. I have written commentary on topics such as fashion, pop culture, and travel, with the latter subject being particularly close to my heart. My early exposure to international travel came while a scholarship student at a private high school. I participated in immersive programs in Mexico and France, where I stayed with host families and took classes at local schools. Those experiences nurtured within me an abiding interest in foreign languages and cultures. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, I majored in both History and Spanish, and spent a semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina to conduct independent research on race and national identity in the region. My semester abroad, in turn, cemented my love of research, which led me to pursue a PhD in Latin American History at the University of Michigan, where I was awarded a Fulbright fellowship for dissertation research in Peru. I write about all this, and the broader African-American experience my travels form part of, in Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad (out now with Crown/Penguin Random House).

Because of how formative travel has been for me, and because I know how cost-prohibitive it can be, I was moved to co-found The Wandering Scholar, a 501c3 non-profit whose mission is to make international education opportunities accessible to students from low-income backgrounds. As the first person in my family to graduate college and pursue an advanced degree, I understand that all it takes is the right opportunity at the right moment in time to change a person’s entire trajectory in life, and The Wandering Scholar works to create just that.