Michael L. Blakey

Biological anthropology, biohistory, bioarchaeology; history and philosophy of science; White supremacy in science and society; publicly engaged archaeology; North America, African diaspora.

As a graduate student at UMass I was encouraged and enabled to pursue my own agenda and vision of activist scholarship.  UMass made all the difference. I will always love the faculty mentors and student collaborators I had the privilege of knowing there. And 'love' is exactly the right word.

Michael Blakey received a B.A. (1978) at Howard University and the M.A. (1980) and Ph.D. (1985) in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.  He was on the faculties of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Medicine at Howard University between 1982-2001 during which time he also held appointments as visiting professor at Spelman College, Columbia University, Brown University and the Universita di Roma, La Sapienza.  He founded the W. Montague Cobb Biological Anthropology Laboratory and served as Curator of its collections at Howard.  He held an appointment as Research Associate in Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution from 1986-1994 and served as President of the Association of Black Anthropologists, 1987-1989.  

Blakey has been a member of the faculty of William & Mary since 2001 where he is currently National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and American Studies.  He is founding Director of the Institute for Historical Biology that provides a space at that university for scholars interested in intersections of history, biology, and culture.  Professor Blakey served as Scientific Director and Principal Investigator of the New York African Burial Ground Project from 1992 until the conclusion of research in 2009. That project initiated an ethical bioarchaeology requiring the informed consent of ‘descendant communities.’  He is currently a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee for the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African-American History and Culture on the Mall.  Blakey has consulted in the development of many museum exhibitions including the travelling exhibition “Race: are we so different” created by the American Anthropological Association and the Visitor Center of the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan.  

 His 90 publications in leading anthropological journals concern paleopathology, historical demography, race and racism, biocultural anthropology, museum studies, and the history and philosophy of science. Blakey’s three volume work, The Blinding Light of Race: race and racism in Western science and society, was published by Routledge Taylor Francis in 2025. He has advanced theories on relationships between human biology and culture, epistemology and ethics, ideology and archaeology, and the democratization of science. He was Co-chair of The Commission for the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains of the American Anthropological Association that conducted global listening sessions with Indigenous and marginalized communities to inform future ethics in bioarchaeology (2022-2924),. He has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including American Anthropologist and American Antiquity. He received the Doctor of Science, Honoris causa, from York College, the City University of New York in 1996, the Centennial Medal of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2008, the SANA Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America in 2012, the Plumeri Award ($20,000) for faculty excellence, in 2021, and two Presidential Awards from the American Anthropological Association (2022, 2024) among other honors. 

[Interview edited on 2025]