Speakers

Benjamin Talton, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and Professor in the Department of History at Howard University. He is an historian who researches and writes about culture and politics in Africa and the African diaspora. He earned his BA in history at Howard University and his doctorate, also in history, at the University of Chicago. 

Prior to joining Howard, Talton was Professor of History at Temple University. He has also taught African History at Hofstra University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. 

A highly respected author, Talton has published three books: The Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality (Palgrave 2010); Black Subjects in Africa and its Diasporas: Race and Gender in Research and Writing (Palgrave 2011), which he co-edited with Dr. Quincy Mills of the University of Maryland; and, most recently, In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (Penn Press 2019), which won the 2020 Wesley-Logan Prize from the American Historical Association. Among his current projects is co-editing Volume III of the Cambridge History of the African Diaspora, with Monique Bedasse and Nemata Blyden, and, chief-editor of all three of the series’ volumes, Michael Gomez. 

Talton’s work has also appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and popular media outlets, including The Washington Post, Jacobin, Current History, the Journal of Asian and African Studies, The African Studies Review, The Conversation, Ghana Studies, and Africa Is A Country. 

Talton serves on the editorial board of the American Historical Review, the leading History academic journal. He is a former editor of African Studies Review, the leading North American peer-reviewed African Studies journal, and serves on the advisory board for New York University’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD). Dr. Talton is a past president of the Ghana Studies Association and a former member of the executive board for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).

I am an empathetic technology researcher that focuses on the intersection of human-centered computing, affective computing, and biometrics. I like to say my research seeks to give voices to everyone that felt silenced by asking questions like: how can technology impact positive human emotions while reducing barriers to entering technology and how can technology build lasting social impact through requiring persons to feel empathy...not just look away?

I currently am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Howard University in Washington, DC. I was recently awarded the EBONY Magazine Power 100 Award for being a STEM Trailblazer 2025 ! I run the Affective Biometrics Lab with my bright students. My most notable project is Project Elevate Black Voices https://www.elevateblackvoiceshu.com. Check out the cool projects we do within ABL. Take a listen to my National Geographic Interview on AI Bias.