Assistant Professor of Critical Media & AI Studies, AFAM & Sociology
Dr. Kevin C. Winstead is an Assistant Professor of Critical Media and AI Studies within the African American Studies program and Sociology department at the University of Florida.
Dr. Winstead’s in-progress book-length manuscript, Sankofa Cyberculture: Black Digital Activism and Disinformation, builds on his decade-long research into the Movement for Black Lives and foreign actors’ attempts to influence the American political process.
Kevin has been part of the founding team of many of the country’s earliest Black Digital Studies centers, including the African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities (AADHum) Initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, AADHum fostered research, education, and training at the intersections of digital humanities and African-American studies and prepared a diverse community of scholars and students whose work has broadened the reach of the digital humanities in African-American history and cultural studies, and enriched humanities research with new methods, archives, and tools.
Kevin has also served as the inaugural Research Lab Fellow for the Project on Rhetorics of Equity, Access, Computation, and Humanities (PREACH) within the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and part of the DISCO Network.
Critical Information Studies, 21st-century social movements, Black digital media, digital humanities, transglobal disinformation.
Books:
Network, DISCO. (2025) Techno-Skepticism: Between Possibilities and Refusal. Stanford University Press
Steele, C.K.; Lu, J.; Winstead, K. (2023) Radical Intentionality: A Practical Guide to Doing the Work of Black Digital Studies. Routledge Press
Selected Journal Publications:
Winstead, K. C. (2017). Black Catholicism and Black Lives Matter: The Process of Joining a Movement. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(11), 1855-1863. Winstead, K. (2017).
“Authentically Black, and Truly Catholic”: A Survey of the Study on Black Catholics. Sociology Compass, 11(10), e12517.
Education:
Ph.D. American Studies, University of Maryland
M.A. Sociology, Southern Illinois University
Awards & Honors:
2024-2025 Black, Brown, and Queer Plus (BBQ+) Early Career Fellowship
2024 Cole, Alyssa P.; Winstead, K.C. Critical Ethnic Studies Paper Award, American Studies Association (Honorable Mention)
Current Courses:
AFA 3840 Black Digital Humanities AFA 4430 Black Lives Matter AFA 4135 Theories of Black America: Science, Tech, and Race
