lindaj

Linda J. Mann is an expert on institutional transitional justice policymaking related to colonialism, enslavement and descendant community engagement, drawing on the study of memory, history, and human rights. Her students and colleagues affectionaly call her Dr. L.

Dr. L is the co-founder and director of the Redress Network, a collaborative project between Columbia University and Howard University. As a senior researcher, she leads an organization whose mission is to bridge the divide between research and policy by establishing a coherent connection between historical injustices, their contemporary consequences, and pathways toward reconciliation and repair. Since 2020, she has also led a collaborative Redress Network project with EUROM at the University of Barcelona and the University of Amsterdam aimed to identify instances of historical injustice where established processes for reparation and memorialization exist.

Dr. L also currently holds the position of Executive Director at a distinguished Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization with a three-decade history of service and impact, Operation Understanding. Previously she served as Executive Director at the John Mitchell Jr. Project at George Mason’s Carter School for Peace and Reconciliation, Executive Director for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University’s School of Law and VP of Research for the Georgetown Memory Project. 

Dr. L recently completed a Fulbright EU Schuman Award where she performed policy-oriented research examining how EU institutions are responding to the call for racial justice to include descendant community engagement. This research critically examined transitional justice (TJ) as a mechanism for reconciling both residual and ongoing harms associated with colonialism, while also investigating the potential effectiveness of such initiative.

When she isn’t leading Operation Understanding DC, you can find Dr. L writing about local and state reparative justice, descendant engagement and maximizing justice potentials. Learn more about her publications here OR most important, you will find her spending time with her amazing family.