advisory board

The Out(sider) Preservation Initiative advisory board consists of thought leaders, activists, and descendant community leaders, supports the project’s action plan, grant processes, and strategic funding sustainability.

At least 30% of the board comprises descendants of historic Black settlements to ensure their voices shape key decisions.

  • Ashley Adams, Black Reparations Project

    Natearah Austin, Washington County Center for African American Heritage and Culture

    Alison Booth, University of Virginia

    Julian Chambliss, Michigan State University

    Lareatha Clay, Shankleville Historical Society

    Nedra Deadwyler, Nedra Deadwyler Consulting

    Portia Hopkins, Rice University

    Jessica Marie Johnson, Johns Hopkins University

    Sue Mobley, Monument Lab

    Justin Reid, Charlottesville Charitable Foundation

    Thaisa Way, Dumbarton Oaks, Garden and Landscape Studies

freedom visionaries

The Freedom Visionaries serve as key thought partners to Dr. Andrea Roberts, helping bring her visions to life and ensuring they are realized through the Out(sider) Preservation Initiative.

  • Dr. Maia L. Butler is Associate Professor of African American Literature at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) and affiliate faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies, Africana Studies, and Graduate Liberal Studies.

Maia Butler

  • Dr. Christy Hyman is the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for Freedom on the Move at Cornell University in the Department of History.

Christy Hyman

  • Michelle Lanier is a proudly unionized, adjunct fellow at the Department of African and African American Studies and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

michelle Lanier

  • Dr. Danielle Purifoy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

danielle Purifoy

  • Dr. J.T. Roane is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Geography and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in Global Racial Justice in the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University.

J.T. Roane

the OPI Team


  • OPI Director

    Dr. Roberts leads the Mellon Foundation-supported Out(sider) Preservation Initiative. She is an associate professor of urban and environmental planning and Director of the Center for Cultural Landscapes Director (CCL) at the University of Virginia. A scholar-activist and descendant of freedom colony founders, she created The Texas Freedom Colonies Project Atlas to preserve Black places through community storytelling and participatory mapping. Dr. Roberts is completing a book on her collaborations with Outsider Preservationists who lead historic preservation projects within historic Black settlements. 


  • Senior Fiscal Technician

    Joyce Arcos, originally from Miami, Florida, began her career at the University of Virginia in 2020 in the Contemplative Sciences Department. She recently became the Senior Fiscal Technician at the School of Architecture, where she manages event planning, travel, budget, scheduling, and expenses for the OPI at the Center for Cultural Landscapes. 

  • Intermediate Research Specialist

    Jennifer provides general support to the Center for Cultural Landscapes as a whole, including its public-facing research projects. With a background including archaeology, library and archival work, and historic preservation, Jennifer brings a broad range of skills and experience to the Center’s projects.

    Before coming to the Center for Cultural Landscapes, Jennifer took part in numerous cultural heritage and historic preservation projects. She worked as an archaeological field technician and an architectural history survey technician, and was both a volunteer and an intern in the DC Historic Preservation Office. This latter opportunity led to independent scholarship at the site of an African American midwife’s home in Washington, DC. As the 2023-2024 Digital Humanities Fellow in the Scholars' Lab at UVA Libraries, Jennifer undertook a 3D/VR reconstruction of a portion of St. Emma Military Academy’s Powhatan, VA campus as an exploration of alternative historic preservation methodologies. 

    When not at work, Jennifer enjoys watching avant-garde movies with friends, cooking new recipes with about a 50% success rate (if we're being generous), and wrangling two feline companions.


  • Project Manager

    Justice Madden is a storyteller and advocate focused on the intersections of food, community, and cultural heritage, particularly through land-based traditions. Her extensive experience includes managing the Heirloom Gardens Oral History Project and organizing events highlighting Black agrarian heritage. At the Center for Cultural Landscapes at the University of Virginia, she supports general CCL operations and Virginia-based outreach and grant reporting for the OPI.

ALUMNI


  • Project Associate

    Daniele Rose Dixon is a Project Associate for the Out(sider) Preservation Initiative at the Center for Cultural Landscapes. She considers her work as a historian, racial justice worker, and heritage conservationist inextricably linked to her historic preservation work in Texas. Ms. Dixon continues the community engagement and ethnographic research of The Texas Freedom Colonies Project and facilitates the expansion of The TXFC Project to California.. Daniele will manage resources and support for our OPI grantees.  

  • Student Research Assistant

    Ethan is an architect by training who in the course of his academic career has found himself increasingly drawn to the landscapes that people, buildings, and cultures are situated in.  Originally from Columbia, SC, with stints living in D.C. and Richmond, he has slowly made his way to Charlottesville where he attends UVA to study architecture, architectural history, and historic preservation.


  • Student Research Assistant

    Julia Aldred is an Architectural History Masters student at the University of Virginia, where her thesis examines the erasure of antifascist history in Berlin, particularly its queer liberation and workers’ rights movements. She is passionate about restorative justice in public history. At the CCL, she is developing the OPI logo and design guidelines. She also manages the UVA Women’s Lacrosse team and serves as the Social Chair for the UVA Society of Architectural Historians.