LaVelle Ridley

LaVelle Ridley is Assistant Professor of Queer/Trans* Studies in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. Dr. Ridley’s research and teaching interests meet at the intersection of queer and transgender studies, Black feminisms, and literary and cultural studies of racialized gender and sexuality. Through life writing, film, and media, she observes how trans women of color use imagination critically to transform the world at large. She is currently working on her first book project, tentatively titled Imagining Freedom: Black Trans Life Narratives and the Politics of Self-Representation, which articulates how black trans women life writers such as Janet Mock, CeCe McDonald, and Venus Selenite engage in political freedom-making through their life narratives.

Dr. Ridley also engages in interdisciplinary collaboration in academic and community spaces, particularly around prison abolition, oral history, and understanding the cultural philosophies of queer and trans people of color. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Feminist Studies, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, the latter for which she serves as Book Reviews Editor. 

Dr. Ridley is the recipient of the 2023-2024 University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has received additional grants and awards for her scholarship and community-engaged work from the University of Michigan, Rackham Graduate School, the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture in Harlem, and the Miss Major Alexander L. Lee TGI Justice Project Black Trans Cultural Center in San Francisco. Dr. Ridley currently serves on advisory/steering committees for several academic organizations and projects that promote trans studies scholarship, public humanities work, and interdisciplinary feminist collaboration. She has served in some administrative capacity for national conferences such as the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), the Transgender Media Lab housed at Carleton University, and the TEN:TACLES (Transgender Educational Network: Theory in Action for Creativity, Liberation, Empowerment, and Service) Initiative, a $1.5 million Mellon Foundation-funded initiative started by trans historian Susan Stryker to bring trans-oriented humanities and cultural studies scholarship to bear on practices of social transformation.