Visiting Scholars and Fellows

Elvatrice Parker Belsches, Community Partner-in-Residence

Elvatrice Belsches is a public historian and author of Richmond, Virginia in the Black America Series.

Matthew Slaats, Community Partner-in-Residence

Matthew Slaats is the senior civic innovation manager for the City of Richmond.

Lauranett Lee, Visiting Scholar

Dr. Lauranett Lee was the founding curator of African-American history at the Virginia Historical Society, and in 2011, she worked with a team of colleagues to launch a genealogical tool called Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names. In 2008, she published Making the American Dream Work: A Cultural History of African Americans in Hopewell, Virginia, an oral history project commissioned by the Hopewell City Council. Lee sits on several boards and is engaged in various community service initiatives, and in 2017, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney appointed her to the Monument Avenue Commission. She also led our University's Institutional History Research Team and advised the Burying Ground Memorialization Committee. She is currently the director of race and justice at Richmond Hill.