Dr Althea Legal-Miller

Althea received her BA in American Studies with Year Abroad (University of California, Berkeley), MA in Contemporary Cinema Cultures, and PhD in American Studies all from King’s College London. Prior to joining CCCU in January 2017, Althea was a Teaching Fellow at UCL. She is the recipient of awards that include an AHRC Doctoral Award, AHRC British Research Council Fellow, and the Mae C. King Distinguished Paper Award on Women, Gender and Black Politics.

Althea is Senior Lecturer in American History and Culture, and currently teaches across the American Studies, History, and British Studies routes/courses. She is a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA), and the recipient of CCCU’s Golden Apple Award for Stand Out Teaching Moment.

Althea currently convenes modules including Making Your Mark [History - Skills] (Level 4); Divided by a Common Language: Culture and Society in Britain and the USA (Level 5); Race and Racism: Conquest, Colonisation and Categorisation in America (Level 5); The Modern Black Freedom Movement (Level 6); American Studies Dissertation (Level 6); Activism, Propaganda, and Popular Culture (Level 7), and contributes to others.

Althea's research interests include:

1. Histories of gender and sexuality: African American cultures, gender-specific violence
2. Visual culture studies: documentary photography and film
3. Critical race studies: racism, policing and incarceration
4. Social movements: racial justice and protest
5. Regionalism: The American South

Her scholarship on the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and UK has appeared in the following publications

:Michael B. McCormack and Althea Legal-Miller, "'All Over the World Like a Fever': Martin Luther King Jr.’s World House and the Movement for Black Lives, in the United States and United Kingdom" in Reclaiming the Great World House: The Global Vision of Martin Luther King Jr. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2019), pp. 254-282.

Althea Legal-Miller, "Race, Policing, and Black Lives Matter" in Gillian Peele, Bruce Cain, Jon Herbert and Andrew Wroe (eds.), Developments in American Politics 9 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pp. 33-48.

Althea Legal-Miller, "'We May Have to Defend Ourselves': Black Women and Campaigns against Police Sexual Violence during the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter Eras" in Françoise Hamlin and Charles McKinney (eds.), From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle (Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 2024), pp. 99-129.

Althea has presented at conferences and workshops in the UK, US, and Ghana, and invitations to speak have been extended from the US Embassy in London, University of Oxford, Brown University, The British Library (BL), The British Film Institute (BFI), The Prince’s Teaching Institute (PTI), and the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW).

Althea is an Associate Fellow at UCL-Institute of the Americas, and served as the Equality and Diversity Representative on the Executive Committee of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), and a member of the Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW).

Her expert media appearances have included the BBC's The One Show; BBC Radio London; BBC Radio 3; Channel 5, and Paramount+.

View commentary on A Big History of America, see Channel 5 at https://www.my5.tv/1-000-years-of-history-usa

African Americans (clip): https://www.facebook.com/MiddlechildProductionsLtd/videos/352094009347123

Native Americans (clip): https://www.facebook.com/channel5uk/videos/3433980799982948

Read more of my research.