Kesha Fikes, Ph.D., is an adjunct faculty member in the Black Studies Department in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Portland State University. They received their Ph.D from the University of California, Los Angeles, in Sociocultural & Linguistic Anthropology. Dr. Fikes’s teaching and research span a wide range of topics within Black Studies and Anthropology. Their work explores the African Diaspora in Europe and Black Feminist Methodologies and their courses focus on diverse healing practices that integrate somatic approaches with social care.
Dr. Fikes’s scholarship has been recognized with prestigious awards for fieldwork from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, and the Ford Foundation. Additionally, they served as a development consultant for the MacArthur Foundation, contributing to a grant initiative on globalization and migration from 2004 to 2005.
As a dedicated teacher-scholar, they are committed to innovating the intersection of accessibility and deep intellectual engagement, striving to make complex ideas approachable without sacrificing depth or rigor.