Leadership and Staff

Beth Pryor is a PhD Candidate in the History Department at the University at Buffalo. She joined the Community of Care project in 2022 as a Research Assistant and especially values co-creating oral histories with members of her community. Her research examines muskets and their socioeconomic and political impact on the British Atlantic World. Using a comparative approach, she explores the “middle grounds” of exchange and argues that the social, economic, and political structures of the British Empire in the Southeastern American colonies and on the Gold Coast of Africa (present-day Ghana) rested on the mediating skills of individual tradesmen and women.

Steve Peraza earned his Ph.D. in U.S. history from SUNY-Buffalo, specializing in African slavery in global perspective. His dissertation examined slaves’ conceptions of law and legal procedure in eighteenth-century Louisiana freedom suits. Postdoctoral research interests include the care economy, disability studies, race and racism in America, the Harlem Renaissance, and the long civil rights movement. He teaches courses on U.S. history, African American history, the African Diaspora, slavery in the Atlantic World, and Hip Hop.

Tabby Violet is a post-doctoral research associate on the Communities of Care project. Her academic work asks questions about imbrications of care and personal responsibility that are intertwined with constructions of gender, race, class, disability, nationality, and their various combinations. She is currently working on co-creating art on the topic of care within the greater Buffalo community through a series of workshops, as well as working on a book about contested illness. Her published work has appeared in The Journal of Medical Humanities and Health Communication.