Assistant Professor of History at Augustana College
About
Raised in southern and central Virginia, Dr. Lauren Hammond earned her BA in history and African and African-American Studies at the University of Virginia and her PhD in Latin American history at the University of Texas at Austin. After completing her graduate degree, she was awarded a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship, which allowed her to develop a set of skills tailored towards teaching, researching, and serving at liberal arts institutions.
She is currently an assistant professor of history and an affiliate of Africana Studies and Latin American Studies at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. In addition to maintaining her research agenda and teaching full-time, Dr. Hammond also has a passion for securing equity for underrepresented groups in the academy. To that end, she serves as the adviser for the college’s NAACP chapter and is the founder and co-chair of the Black Faculty and Staff Advisory Council and of Augustana’s mentoring program for international students and students of color interested in attending graduate school.
Current Work:
Dr. Hammond’s research interests explore the intersection of race, inequality, and US-Latin American relations. Her current project, tentatively titled “Black and Brown Neighbors: African Americans, Afro-Latin Americans, and the Good Neighbor Policy, 1933-1945,” examines the ways in which African-American foreign policy observers employed Good Neighbor rhetoric and an Afro-diasporic politics to advocate for Afro-Latin American populations in the face of US imperialism.
Reserach Area Keyword(s):
History, African diaspora, foreign policy
