Statement & Bio

Dr. Robert Bellinger is an educator and historian with a background in Black Studies (BA Amherst College; EdM Harvard Graduate School of Education; PhD in history Boston College). As a professor he taught classes in Black Studies, American history, West African history and culture, and education to university undergraduates for more than 30 years. Additionally, he has served as a consultant and historian for documentary films, most notably the well-received documentary Birth of a Movement (2017). Dr. Bellinger has been engaged in public history projects at historic sites, monuments, and installations in Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Senegal, West Africa and he has developed a photographic collection of African American historic sites. Some of these appear in the book Monuments, Memorials and Historic Sites: New England’s Visible Black History in Photographs (2017). Since 2005 Dr. Bellinger has been director of the Géwël Tradition Project which is engaged in researching, documenting, and supporting the géwël, or griot tradition of Dakar, Senegal. He is also responsible for creating the project archives which holds over 5,000 of his photographs.

Publications

Book

Monuments, Memorials and Historic Sites, New England’s Visible Black History in Photographs. Photographs and Text by Robert A. Bellinger, Ph.D. AAHGS New England Chapter, Inc., 2017

Articles

What’s in A Name? The Gunnery School Bulletin, December 2019

Dancing Through Time and Space: African Dance and the Géwël Tradition of Senegal at Suffolk University, Journal of Pan African Studies (on-line), Volume 6 Number 5, 2013, http://www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol6no5/6.5-Bellinger.pdf

The Géwël Tradition Project: Supporting A Living Tradition, African Arts, Spring 2013, Vol. 46, No.

Make it

Boards & Memberships

-The African American Historical and Genealogical Society, New England Chapter (1998-present)

-Afriterra, Inc. Board Member, Boston, MA (1999-present)

-The Colonial Society of Massachusetts (2010-present)

-Massachusetts Historical Society Fellow (2010-present)

-Robbins House Advisory Committee, Concord, MA (2016-present)

-Salem United Advisory Board, Salem, MA (2017-2019)

-Shirley-Eustis House Board of Advisors, Roxbury, MA (2019-present)

-Middleton Place Board of Trustees, Charleston, SC (2023-present)

-Sons of the American Revolution (2023-present)