Dr. Rik Stevenson

Dr. Rik Stevenson is a professor at the University of Florida in the African American Studies Department. His primary research interests are in Middle Passage studies, Slave Ships, Mortality Scholarship, Resistance Studies American Slavery and African Cosmologies He is also familiar with several traditional African cosmologies as they relate to transmigration and cultural customs. His Ph.D, is from Michigan State University in African American and African Studies, Diaspora Studies, the Middle Passage and Antebellum American History.

As a historian his historical research interests integrates the inter-disciplinarity of African and African American Studies in the context of West and West Central African Cosmologies as they relate to slave ship resistance. He has also explored sunken slaving vessels and participated in nautical archaeological underwater research off of the coast of Florida. His dissertation was a study on suicide by drowning as a form of resistance during the Middle Passage.