Tiyi M. Morris is Associate Professor of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University at Newark and the co-director of the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP). She is a civil rights historian who studies Black women’s social and political activism. Teaching in African American and African Studies, a discipline that emerged from social justice movements, Dr. Morris’ curricula underscore the need to create a more just and equitable society. She believes her role as an educator is to help dismantle systems of oppression by liberating the minds of students and empowering them to challenge the oppressions they face and/or perpetuate.

In 2019, Dr. Morris began teaching in correctional institutions to support the discipline’s mission to connect the community to the campus and to actualize a philosophy of education as the practice of freedom. In collaboration with Dr. Mary Thomas at OPEEP, she is working to expand OSU’s commitment to prison-based education. She has taught courses on Black liberation movements and feminist studies at Franklin Medical Center and the Ohio Reformatory for Women. Her current research examines women’s racial identities and relationality in carceral institutions in Ohio. Dr. Morris previously served on the Boards of the Abortion Fund of Ohio, and Westerville for Racial Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice Engagement (WeRISE).

You can learn more about her work at www.opeep.osu.edu and www.tiyimorris.com.  

Sample Publications:

“From the Deep South to the Global South: The Transnational Activism of Clarie Collins Harvey and

Unita Blackwell.” Journal of African American History. Volume 109, Number 2, Spring 2024.

Morris, Tiyi and Cope, Virginia. “ ‘All hail the Queen’: Cultural Bearing, Civic Engagement, and the

Mardi Gras Indian Queens.” The Scholar & Feminist Online. Issue 18.1, Fall/Winter 2022.

“(Un)Learning Hollywood’s Civil Rights Movement: A Scholar’s Critique.” Journal of African

American Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4, December 2018.

Womanpower Unlimited and the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi. University of Georgia Press,

2015.

Curriculum Vitae