Ashanté M. Reese

Dr. Ashanté M. Reese is a writer, anthropologist, and associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She earned a bachelor’s degree in History with a minor in African American Studies from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Prior to her graduate studies, she served as a middle school teacher at the Coretta Scott King Leadership Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. She later attended American University, where she earned a PhD in Anthropology.

Broadly speaking, Dr. Reese’s work focuses on Black geographies—the ways Black people imagine, produce, and navigate the spaces they occupy. Much of her scholarship centers on Black food culture and food justice.

While she is committed to documenting the ways anti-Blackness constrains Black life, her work is guided by a central question: what and who survives? This inquiry shapes her ongoing interest in community and vulnerability across her research, personal life, and the broader human experience. She examines how people build and sustain lives even while living under conditions of surveillance, state neglect, and structural inequality.