Amanda White Gibson received a PhD in history from the College of William & Mary in 2021. Dr. Gibson specializes in African American and Early American History with emphasis on slavery, capitalism, and the South. Prior to her return to academia, Gibson was Outreach Coordinator at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond where she worked to make the Fed more accessible to the public: designing programs, helping design the Fed’s museum space, and writing curriculum for students.
Dr. Gibson has held a number of academic fellowships including a predoctoral fellowship at the Woodson Institute at UVA, a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for the Study of American Democracy at Kenyon College, a postdoctoral fellowship at the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Engagements Program at UVA. Her research has been published with the Journal of Southern History, and she is completing her first book under advance contract with UVA Press, Financing Freedom: Black Community Economics in the Antebellum South. Dr. Gibson has taught courses in African American and Southern History at W&M, UVA, Kenyon, Randolph-Macon, and Virginia State University.
Dr. Gibson is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Virginia State University and the Director of the Civics Exchange, an initiative that connects the public with members of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. As part of that work, she is building partnerships and coordinating innovative programming to engage members of the media, K-12 teachers, and other audiences with the history that made America.
With deep roots in the Commonwealth, Dr. Gibson is passionate about Virginia history and is animated by the belief that the lessons of our past can make us better community members today.