Tracye A. Matthews
Executive Director, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture"Tracye is an incisive and impactful leader who brings immense energy and care to every project she partakes in.”
The staff recipient for the 2023 Diversity Leadership Awards, Tracye A. Matthews is a historian, curator, and documentary filmmaker working within and between the realms of academia, public history, museums, and documentary film. Most recently, she produced the Academy Award-shortlisted documentary short ’63 Boycott with Kartemquin Films. She is currently executive director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, where she began her UChicago career as a Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow.
The Diversity Leadership Awards recognize University faculty, students, staff, and alumni who have shown a commitment to fostering justice and equality. You can learn more about the awards and view past winners on the University’s Diversity & Inclusion website.
Excerpts from Matthews' nominating materials:
“Dr. Matthews is the kind of leader able to inspire new and greater leadership from those around her."
“She is a values-driven administrator and intellectual who has brought invaluable institutional memory, relationship centered and process-oriented praxis, generosity, and joy to the day-to-day work of fulfilling the Center’s mission and serving our numerous and varied constituencies.”
“Tracye is an incisive and impactful leader who brings immense energy and care to every project she partakes in.”
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For the past 18 years, Matthews has played a pivotal leadership role in promoting engaged scholarship and advocacy around race and anti-racism at CSRPC and across the University. She has established and sustained numerous partnerships, positioning CSRPC as a key connector of University and South Side communities and worked tirelessly to offer innovative public programming and launch a wide variety of new initiatives. She co-created CSRPC’s decade old Artist-in-Residence Program with Arts + Public Life, was the lead organizer of the Timuel Black at 100 Symposium and was instrumental in developing the Mass Incarceration Working Group, Land Acknowledgement Working Group, Black Scholars Salon, and Nappy Hour, a social networking space for Black staff.
Matthews is co-founder of the Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project, a public programming collective, and a board member of Sisters in Cinema Media Arts Center. Prior to her arrival at UChicago, she was a public historian at the Chicago History Museum and an assistant professor in Africana studies at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.
Matthews received her Ph.D. in history and bachelor of arts degree in psychology from the University of Michigan.
Read about all the 2023 Diversity Leadership Award winners in this story from UChicago News.