LeConté Dill
Associate Professor of African American and African Studies | Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, UNITED STATES
LeConté Dill's work focuses on the safety, resilience, and wellness strategies of urban Black girls and other youth of color.
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Biography
A scholar, educator, and poet, Dr. LeConté J. Dill is an Associate Professor of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Guided by Black Feminist epistemologies and using qualitative and arts-based research methods, Dr. Dill has a commitment toward transdisciplinary, community-accountable scholarship. Her work focuses on the safety, resilience, and wellness strategies of urban Black girls and other youth of color.
Born and raised in South Central L.A., Dr. Dill earned her B.A. in Sociology from Spelman College, her Master of Public Health degree in Community Health Sciences from the University of California Los Angeles, her Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of California Berkeley, and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Health Policy in the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. Her scholarship is critically informed by years of working in partnership with youth and community organizers, health educators, and policy advocates at community-based organizations and public health departments on issues related to chronic disease prevention, violence intervention, and juvenile justice. A Research Associate at the African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dr. Dill also previously served on the faculty at several schools and programs of public health across the U.S.
Dr. Dill has been writing creatively from a young age. She was a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop Fellow in 2016, a Small Orange Press Emerging Woman Poet Honorable Mention in 2019, and an Honorable Mention for the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize in 2021. Dr. Dill also integrates poetry into her ethnographic research with participants in what she has coined as “participatory narrative analysis.” Dr. Dill’s scholarly and creative works have been published in a diverse array of spaces, such as the Du Bois Review, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Adolescent Research, Journal of Poetry Therapy, Poetry Magazine, The Feminist Wire, and Mom Egg Review.
Dr. Dill is deeply committed to teaching and mentoring. She actively works to amplify students as co-learners and co-scholars. Recently certified as a mindfulness instructor, Dr. Dill’s emerging work around “centering wellness” integrates meditation, poetry, and somatics for students, other researchers, and community partners.
Industry Expertise (1)
Education/Learning
Areas of Expertise (4)
Black Feminist Theory
African Studies
African American Studies
Mindfulness
Accomplishments (3)
Honorable Mention, Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize (professional)
2021
Honorable Mention, Small Orange Press Emerging Woman Poet (professional)
2019
Fellow, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop (professional)
2016
Education (3)
University of California, Berkeley: DrPH, Public Health 2011
UCLA: MPH, Community Health Sciences 2002
Spelman College: B.A., Sociology 2000
Links (2)
News (1)
MSU African American and African Studies “unicorns” drive Black futures beyond survival into wellness
WKAR Online online
2022-03-29
Brown talks about the accomplished and passionate additions to the department’s faculty. Dill talks about her background and what attracted her to AAAS at MSU. “What attracted me to AAAS was the centering, the unapologetic centering of Black feminisms, which is unique and rare and nuanced, particularly in Black studies, but also across disciplines in the academy,” says Dill. “It was this calling and shouting out that Black feminisms are the center. It's not an elective, it's not an afterthought; it's the center for everything they do. And so, much like I've lived my life and grounded my scholarship in that, that attracted me.
Journal Articles (2)
Breathe into Believing
Hypatia2021 This begins before 1896. This begins before Arkansas. But “this can't be right grandmother. who are our Ancestors! she said, shit gal, i don't know” (Bridgforth 2012). One of my ancestors walks toward me. She be Gertrude. Gertrude Grant. I have no pictures of her. I have no living memories of her. Yet I remember. Her. My Nana's mama, born around 1890 in the lumber town of Canfield in southern Arkansas.
“The hook-up”: How youth-serving organizations facilitate network-based social capital for urban youth of color
Jounral of Community Psychology2019 Young people of color residing in distressed urban contexts face challenges in accessing social capital that supports positive development and the transition to educational and employment opportunities. Youth-serving organizations play potentially important roles for youth participants to access and leverage networks. This ethnographic study draws on qualitative interviews, conducted with adolescents at a youth-serving organization based in East Oakland, California, to examine how network-based social capital is activated and sustained for and by urban Black and Latinx youth.
