Biography

Professor Rosalyn Howard was an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida (UCF). She specialized in Cultural Anthropology and her primary area of research was ethnohistorical studies of the African Diaspora with a focus on the interrelationships formed by African and Indigenous peoples in the Americas and the Caribbean. Dr. Howard has conducted extensive research among mixed Native-African populations in The Bahamas and Bermuda. Among her publications is the book entitled Black Seminoles in the Bahamas, an ethnographic study of the Black Seminole descendant community of Red Bays, Andros Island, Bahamas.

Dr. Howard was also a member of a public anthropology research project entitled “Looking for Angola” currently compiling archaeological, cultural, and archival evidence of an early 19^th century Florida maroon community, formerly located near present-day Sarasota, Florida, which has a direct connection to Red Bays (www.lookingforangola.org). Prof. Howard was also a consultant to the Cultural Heritage tourism project (co-sponsored by the State of Florida and The Bahamas Ministries of Culture and Tourism) that connects the Red Bays community to the Gullah corridor of South Carolina and Georgia, and Fort Mose near St. Augustine, Florida. Dr. Howard’s interest in exploring state-of-the-art pedagogy led to her participation in a distance education project exploring the peoples and cultures of South Africa and Swaziland in 2010. During summer 2011, Prof. Howard participated in a Fulbright-Hays grant project exploring cultural, educational and democractic issues in Botswana.

Dr. Howard joined the UCF Department of Anthropology in 1999 and retired in 2015. She sadly passed away in April 2023.

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