SHEMARIAH J. ARKI, EdD

Shemariah J. Arki identifies as an educator, an activist and an organizer. Currently serving as a professor in the department of Pan-African Studies and as the interim director of the Center for Pan African Culture, both at Kent State University, she is an intersectional feminist scholar with expert knowledge and skills to develop, implement, facilitate and evaluate curricula that promote institutional equity, communication, and access for traditionally marginalized students and families. Dr. Arki received a graduate certificate from the Penn Equity Institute for Doctoral Students from the Center for The Study of Race & Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She has also been a certified Federal EEO investigator since 2017.

Serving as the founder and program director of the Ellipsis Institute for Women of Color in the Academy and as an auto/ethnographic researcher and creative non-fiction writer, her work centers cultural epistemologies and the construction of a #BlackCommaFeminist pedagogy. Shemariah is one of five editors for the forthcoming textbook, Teaching Brilliant and Beautiful Black Girls, curated to position classrooms as places of radical transformation and to amplify the voices of the Black girls who inhabit them. Forthcoming in spring 2021, her book Gender and Sexualities in Ghanaian Societies, which chronicles her ‘year of return journey' to Ghana and being enstooled as Queen Mother Bonyi Bofor Akosua Kalesea of the Igbagba lineage, in the village of Akpafu Todzi in the Oti region of Ghana, will be released.

Shemariah also serves outside the academy as an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church and the Founder and Lead Experience Curator for Sankofa Circle International, where she engages creative entrepreneurs through a variety of channels with one goal: lift as you climb. Shemariah also serves as the board co-chair of Shooting Without Bullets. Most recently, Shemariah’s work is has been recognized by Case Western Reserve University’s LGBT Center (QGrad’s Outstanding Faculty Award 2020) and the Office for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity (2019 Diversity Collaboration Excellence Award), Who’s Who in Black Cleveland (2016-2019), Kaleidoscope’s 40 under 40 Club and by the Kiwanis Club at High Tech Academy. A proud Clevelander and mom of Solomon Tafari and Malcom Saadiq, Shemariah enjoys traveling, yoga and creating memories with her family.