Sharon Harley is the Principal Investigator and Project Director of the African/Black Diaspora Research Seminar at the University of Maryland. She is an associate professor and former chair of the African American Studies Department at Maryland. Dr. Harley is the recipient of W.E. B. Du Bois fellowship at Harvard's Hutchins Center and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies.

A. Lynn Bolles is Professor Emerita in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland. She serves as a member of the advisory board for the African/Black Diaspora Research Seminar and contributes to the organization and intellectual flow of the project. In addition, Dr. Bolles is a seminar participant.

Mary Osirim is Special Advisor to the Provost, Professor of Sociology and immediate past Provost at Bryn Mawr College. She is a seminar participant and serves as a member of the advisory board for the African/Black Diaspora Research Seminar. Her research focuses on transnationalism and community development among African immigrants in the northeastern United States. Dr. Osirim is co-editor of Global Philadelphia: Immigrant Communities, Old and New and has published book chapters and articles in African and Asian Studies, the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia and Gender and Society on African immigrant communities.