Alissa Rae Funderburk

Alissa Rae Funderburk is the Mellon Foundation Oral Historian for the Margaret Walker Center at the HBCU Jackson State University. She maintains an oral history archive that, like the Center, is dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African American history and culture. Previously, she taught an oral history course for high schoolers at the Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center and conducted freelance interviews for the city of Jersey City. She holds both a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and masters degree in oral history from Columbia University. In graduate school, Alissa Rae served as Deputy Director of the Columbia Life Histories Project alongside its co-founder Benji de la Piedra and her thesis on the religious and spiritual experiences of Black men in New York City was a continuation of her undergraduate studies of race, culture, religion, and the African diaspora, as a John W. Kluge Scholar in the Columbia College class of 2012. 

Currently Alissa Rae serves as a council member for the Oral History Association and is creator of the new nonprofit, The Black Oral Historians Network, a virtual meeting ground for Black memory workers. Her most recent project, Thee Black Pride in JXN focuses on recording the life histories of Black members of the LGBTQ community in Jackson, Ms. In addition, her latest research centers on narrator compensation, reparations, and the transcription of Black voices. For more visit alissaraefunderburk.com.