About Dean Daina Ramey Berry

Dr. Daina Ramey Berry is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She came to Santa Barbara in August 2022 after serving as the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at The University of Texas. She is an internationally recognized scholar of the enslaved and a specialist on gender and slavery and Black women’s history in the United States. Professor Berry completed her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in African American Studies and U.S. History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Berry is the award-winning author and editor of six books and numerous scholarly articles. Her most recent book, A Black Women’s History of the United States, won the 2021 Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Book in Feminist Studies, was a 2021 NAACP Finalist for Literary Non-Fiction, and received honorable mention for the 2021 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award sponsored by the Organization of American Historians. Her other book, The Price for their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, received the Phyllis Wheatley Award for Scholarly Research from the Sons and Daughters of the US Middle Passage, the 2018 Best Book Prize from the Society for the History of the Early American Republic, and the 2018 Hamilton Book Prize from the University Co-op for the best book among UT Austin faculty. Berry’s book was also a finalist for the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize awarded by Yale University and the Gilder Lehrman Institute. She is completing two other contracted books, The Myths of Slavery (Beacon Press) and a biography of Anna Murray Douglass (Yale University Press).

Among Dr. Berry’s most recent honors and awards are her induction in 2021 as a fellow of the Society of American Historians and the American Antiquarian Society. She has received prestigious fellowships for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Association of University Women, and the Ford Foundation. She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. Professor Berry is the associate editor for The Journal of African American History. She is also a co-editor for the Russell Sage Foundation’s special issues and conference on “Black Reparations: Insights from the Social Sciences.”

Dr. Berry has featured in multiple documentaries and TV shows, including “Who Do You Think You Are?” (NBC/TLC), “Looking at Nat Turner’s Legacy” on National Geographic Explorer; “Riveted: The History of Jeans” on American Experience/PBS. In 2021 she was featured on PBS’s NewsHour, Brief But Spectacular, and appointed to serve on the program’s board of advisors. In 2016, she served as a historical consultant and technical advisor for the remake of ROOTS by Alex Haley (HISTORY/ A+E). She is also the co-producer with Adriane Hopper Williams (EnLight Productions) for a multimedia series on women’s contributions to United States History called Making History Hers.

She is a consultant for museums and historical societies throughout the United States, including being appointed to the Montpelier Plantation Board of Directors, representing the descendant community. She also consulted on the restoration and interpretation of historical sites such as the Owens-Thomas House (Savannah, GA), Philipsburg Manor (Sleepy Hollow, NY), and the Neill-Cochran House (Austin, TX).

Dr. Berry has provided expert testimony on the role of banks and insurance companies in financing slavery for the US House Committee on Financial Services and testified before the California Senate’s Reparations Task Force on the impact of enslavement.

In 2018 she produced several online essays during Black History Month for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in collaboration with Biography.com and History.com. Dr. Berry has edited the text for the award-winning “People Not Property” website on slavery in the North.

She has written for the New York Times, Forbes, The Atlantic, Time, the Washington Post, Politico, Texas Monthly, and others. She has been interviewed on subjects including slavery and Black women by media outlets including NPR, MSNBC, NBC, USA Today, PBS, Time, National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Dr. Berry volunteers and works with PreK-12 grade students and their educators throughout the United States. While at The University of Texas at Austin, she worked with colleagues in the College of Education, offering workshops to educators. She has also created a 5th grade Social Studies curriculum on a grant funded by the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Berry also serves as a lead author for the next edition of McGraw Hill’s middle school and high school American history textbooks. As a member of the Town Lake (TX) Chapter of The Links Inc., she served as chair of the Arts Facet for two years, offering monthly programming for young girls/women at the Bertha Sadler Means Young Women's Leadership Academy. In 2019, Austin ISD recognized Dr. Berry with the Hobart L. Gaines Award, and in 2022 The Seedling Foundation recognized her as one of Austin’s Fab Five Community leaders.