A bit of me…
Hello, Abena here! 👋🏾
I am Ghanian and Trinidadian, first generation Black British. I’ve been living in the American South since 2016, and as of September 2023 I am new to Pennsylvania. I grew up on a steady diet of rice and peas, chicken curry, plantain, jollof rice, and Jesus. My family is tight, with two parents who love God deeply and two sisters I’ve always looked up to.
Before I finished primary school, my relatives and family friends were already jokingly calling me “Prof.” Yes, this nerdy I’ve-been-in-school-until-age-29 persona reared its head pretty early on! Reading and writing were my first loves. I spent countless nights staying up too late devouring Malorie Blackman and Enid Blyton, and almost as many nights filling notebooks with my own thoughts and stories.
Music and performance became my next loves. I trained classically in piano and voice from the age of 7 to 11. Eventually, I performed in choirs and operettas. I fell in love with the expression of feelings through song. To this day, I love that a song can make you feel things you haven’t even experienced, and while I no longer perform, I still cherish this feeling.
Finally, I love fashion, ESPECIALLY vintage clothes and handbags. In my world, my outfit speaks a thousand words—my expression of feelings and parts of myself that words cannot always capture.
📚 Me, the academic…
In both my education and career, I am an historian. I studied History at the University of Edinburgh, and when I graduated I felt like I’d only scratched the surface of the things I wanted to know. I still had countless unanswered questions. This, combined with feeling led to move to the States and continue schooling, led me to apply and enroll at Vanderbilt University to begin my PhD, in 2016. There, I dove head first into the world of American Civil War history, with a focus on enslaved women’s efforts to liberate themselves and build free lives.
I am passionate about centering the enslaved and elevating the voices of those who have been silenced historically. I don’t see my research, teaching, or service to academia as intellectual curiosities. Rather, I see my work as an effort to restore the generational freedom-building work of Black women in the American church and throughout American history. In a moment where Black women are made to question our place within the nations and institutions to which we belong, this work is meaningful.
I graduated in 2022 and am now Assistant Research Professor and Associate Director of the the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State University.
⛪️ Me, a friend and a Follower of The Way…
Friendship, an often under-appreciated yet priceless gift of love and knowing, has played an irreplaceable role in my life. I am here because of the friends who have loved me well and demonstrated the grace of God continuously, even from afar.
Above all these loves is my love of Jesus in the Triune God. I say the Triune God because I believe the Holy Spirit is often rejected by the Church in America. I am thoroughly in love with God, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that so. He is the centripetal force of my life, the strength of my todays and the hope of all my tomorrows. Whether we are talking about history, fashion, marriage, my career, or what gets me through life, I long for every part of my imagination to be infused with the beauty of God. I fell in love with God at a young age, and I long to continually live in that love.
✍🏾 Me, the author of this blog…
These are all parts of me which I hope to share here. I am excited about sharing the ways in which my faith shapes my understanding of history and intertwines with the seemingly mundane. Here, you can expect to encounter me as an historian, a writer, an educator, a nerd, and muser of all things love (by which I mean: God’s love, friendship, relationship, and community). Lastly, and most importantly, I am a seeker of “Common Grace” in this beautiful broken world we live in. Common Grace is the theological concept that all of humanity is made in the image of God and thus blessed by the kindness of God. To me, as an academic, I always look for what insights can be found in the work of all sorts of thinkers and people, rather than feeling obliged to accept or discard ideas wholesale.
I am also the wife of a wonderful man and a student of this whole marriage thing. We’re passionate about walking in wisdom, generosity, and hospitality—as best we can. We love people, but more than that, we love learning how to love God and people well. We’re both nerdy, albeit in very different ways. We’re learning to sharpen one another’s gifts and he is constantly encouraging me to walk in mine.
That’s all for now. Thank you for visiting. I hope that spending time here leads you to see the world as more beautiful than it previously seemed, and God even more so.
Photography by Robbie Larsen