Angel Adams Parham

Angel Parham is a visiting fellow with the Mercatus Center’s Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange. Parham is Associate Professor of Sociology, senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and Associate Director for the major in Political and Social Thought at the University of Virginia. Through her research in historical sociology, she engages in inquiry that examines the past in order to better understand how to live well in the present and envision wisely for the future. Her first book,  American Routes: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation of Race (Oxford, 2017), received several awards. Her latest book, co-authored with Anika Prather, was published in 2022 and is entitled The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature. Parham has published articles on the intersection of Black writers and classical liberal education in popular outlets including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Public Discourse, and Common Good Magazine.  Her work finds expression in the community in her capacity as the co-founder and executive director of Nyansa Classical Community, an educational organization which provides curricula and programming designed to connect with students from diverse backgrounds, inviting them to take part in the Great Conversation, cultivate the moral imagination, and pursue truth, goodness, and beauty. Parham has been a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, as well as the recipient of a Fulbright grant. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and completed her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.